FARK.com: (7044395) Wild parrots are learning English from escaped pet birds, though the Norwegian Blue remains strangely mute on the subject

If you can read this, either the style sheet didn't load or you have an older browser that doesn't support style sheets. Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page.

		Wild parrots are learning English from escaped pet birds, though the Norwegian Blue remains strangely mute on the subject (outsideonline.com)		7
		More: Misc, parrot sketch, English, shuttle

• • •

6313 clicks; posted to Main » on 11 Apr 2012 at 2:44 PM | Favorite | share:

Share this link:

URL:

http://fark.com/go/7044395

Bookmark:

Article Comments close

Voting Results (Smartest)

View Voting Results: Smartest and Funniest

Redisplay/refresh voting results (Smartest or Funniest) or Return to comments

Archived thread

Smeggy Smurf		2012-04-11 03:04:29 PM

2 votes:

Has anybody else wanted to teach parrots everything George Carlin ever ranted about and then donate the birds to churches everywhere?

Julie Cochrane		2012-04-11 09:49:41 PM

1 votes:

ByOwlLight: So, no, the average parrot out there isn't going to bump around, speaking English like a pro, and it's not like some English parrot dialect is going to evolve. But the assumption that animals can't speak languages or manipulate words/sentences to fit their meanings is kind of wrong.

I think the way I'd put it is that some specific species of other animals can learn and manipulate language a lot better than we'd thought.

There's clearly a huge qualitative difference between humans and species that aren't humans, but trying to look for an absolute, bright line where we can say that humans can do this but other animals can't---historically, whenever some researcher has tried to define that bright red line, it's just served as a challenge for other researchers to find examples of other species crossing that line.

You're never going to have bunny rabbits win the inter-species brain Olympics. Neither will chickens or sheep.

But bonobos, African grey parrots, crows, various others---those are some pretty smart species. Who still can't do everything we can do. It's just the line between can and can't is more a matter of shades of gray. Or grey.

doglover		2012-04-11 07:22:57 PM

1 votes:

ladyfortuna: I wouldn't be surprised if many animals turn out to be smarter than previously thought.

Only if the "than previously thought" is thought by idiot scientists who trust some research paper in the Chicago format about the behavior of lab rats under insanely cruel laboratory tests with electrified floors and stuff more than the testimony of zookeepers, hunters, vets, pet owners, and farmers who observe animals in situ their whole lives.

Anyone who works with animals soon learns they're not just automatons. Hunter tribes worship them for a reason. If Native American lore says that crows are smart, you'd best believe it wasn't just arbitrary. They love to play tricks and will remember you and can be taught. So much more fun to feed than pigeons.

whither_apophis		2012-04-11 03:59:28 PM

1 votes:

BurnShrike: Escaped pet parrots in Australia are teaching wild birds English

When are they going to teach it to the Australians?

Great a bunch of parrots all squawking "Hello Bruce!"

ByOwlLight		2012-04-11 03:50:59 PM

1 votes:

Need_MindBleach: but they can't form sentences or re-arrange the words to have a different meaning.

...except that that example proves that they can, since Alex combined cork and nut to make a new word. Another African Grey, N'Kisi, asked Jane Goodall "Got a chimp?" when he met her, because he'd seen pictures of her in Africa. He wasn't trained to do that.

And since you brought in other animals, I'll also mention the hilarious example of Koko the gorilla calling people stuff like "dirty toilet devil" when she was mad at them. She effectively created her own swear words by comboing things.

So, no, the average parrot out there isn't going to bump around, speaking English like a pro, and it's not like some English parrot dialect is going to evolve. But the assumption that animals can't speak languages or manipulate words/sentences to fit their meanings is kind of wrong.

ByOwlLight		2012-04-11 03:33:59 PM

1 votes:

Need_MindBleach: Ooh, linguistics! No, I think they'd have to be having actual conversations for that to happen, not just repeating words and phrases. To birds, (most of the time) they're just repeating what they think are calls humans make, and adopting those calls as their own.

African Greys have been proven to actually understand and speak words. The best example I can think of right now is that Alex, the super famous one, really, really liked almonds, but they didn't teach him the word for them. So he went and invented his own word, and one day asked if he could have some "corknuts," since they kind of look like corks when in the shell.

I don't know about other species, but smart African Greys at least are doing more than just mimicking.