G'day
darling! Talking birds that escaped from Australian owners teach wild cockatoos
to speak
By
Richard
Shears
Last
updated at 10:16 PM on 14th September 2011
If
you’re out for a walk and a bird in a tree says to you ‘Hello there’, don’t
worry, you’re not going mad.
Naturalists have
reported a growing phenomenon of pet parrots that have been taught to repeat
phrases by their owners before escaping from their cages and then passing on the
technique to the wild flocks they join.
One scientist said
that he had received numerous calls from people who were baffled to hear voices
calling to them from trees in their gardens.
‘Hello there!’,
‘Hello darling!’ and ‘What’s happening?’ are among the chorus of comments that
flocks of wild birds have been repeating after picking up words and sentences
from other birds that were once household pets.
Naturalist Martyn Robinson
said: ‘We’ve had people calling us thinking they’ve had something put into their
drink because they’ve gone out to look at the flock of birds in their back yard
and all the birds have been saying something like “Who’s a pretty boy,
then?” ’
WHY PARROTS
MIMIC
Usually, the calls of
‘wild’ parrots are far higher-pitched and much faster than the human voice.
Not every
species of parrot mimics other creatures, but even in the wild, some species
imitate other birds – so the idea that an ‘alien’ noise such as the human voice
could spread through a parrot population may not be that
far-fetched.
It
is theorised that by mimicking the calls of nearby creatures, including each
other, parrots have the equivalent of human ‘dialects’ – so that parrots from
one area ‘know’ when they encounter parrots from another area.
This helps
territorial groups of parrots to ‘identify’ outsiders who might have drifted in.
In
theory, large groups of parrots could thus ‘learn’ calls from one another, and
even spread the sounds of ‘human’ speech through a large population.
Mr Robinson, who is
based at the Australian Museum in Sydney, said the usual sequence of events saw
a caged parrot of some kind which had been taught phrases but had then made its
escape.
It would then join a
wild flock and chatter away in the trees, its words being learned by
younger birds in the flock. The older ones would be unlikely to start
learning.
When chicks are born,
they hear the words being spoken by the older birds and grow up repeating the
phrases. And so it continues, generation after generation.
Mr Robinson said that
because of a drought in the western regions of New South Wales, flocks of wild
birds – ‘speakers’ among them – have been flying to Sydney, where more food is
available, and have been hanging around suburban gardens. From the tree tops in
gardens, from chimney pots and lamp posts, the flocks have been talking away,
leaving many people wondering if their minds were playing tricks on
them.
‘These birds are very
smart and very social, meaning that communication and contact is important
between them,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘These flocks are showing to us that they
aren’t quite as bird-brained as many people think.
‘I just hope a pet
bird that’s been taught dirty words doesn’t join a flock because we
don
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037209/Gday-darling-Flocks-chattering-cockatoos-driving-Australias-crazy.html#ixzz1Y3qtY4wu
