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Friday, July 15, 2011

Baby parrots have unique "names" which function like human names

I was amazed to read some reports on research by a Karl Berg, and his group, from Cornell University, that indicates that baby parrots are given names by their parents, and modify these slightly, so that each parrot has a unique sound sequence that identifies the animal, much like "John Jones, Jr." might identify a human individual.

Here is the report in Science Now, and here in Nature News blog. The reports are readable, and interesting, and both of them include a short video. Science and Nature are the two most important scientific periodicals in English.

Thanks for reading!

2 comments:

atlibertytosay said...

I've always thought "triggered memories" were interesting in parrots.

I have a bird owner friend and her parrot would randomly say things that she hadn't said in years.

She left the bird with the History channel on all day just to see what she would repeat when she returned home.

It was interesting to hear a recap of the nuclear bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks! That's amazing. So are parrot brains, apparently.