You Don't Say!

In the Dark Ages of bird care, just as diets were poor and cages small, the information of teaching birds to talk was scanty and highly inaccurate. The lore of the day was bizarre and often potentially dangerous. A popular myth was that birds couldn't talk until their tongues were split! Some "experts" believed that a parrot learned better if it was put in a dark closet and words were periodically shouted at it.

When I worked as a zookeeper twenty years ago, I saw many unfortunate parrots being donated. All of the birds were wild-caught, some probably smuggled. A common practice of the day was, upon capture, to surgically pinion a parrot's wing, rendering it unable to fly; by pinioning, a few wing bones were removed, leaving the bird looking almost intact. The birds with the worst problems had been pinioned. I don't know if the birds still felt pain after their surgery, but these parrots always appeared traumatized. Most seemed quite withdrawn. Many plucked their feathers. By contrast, the zoo's fully flighted scarlet macaw would "buzz" over me in the flight cage; and I was able to train her to take peanuts gently from my teeth. Compounding the traumas of importation and pinioning were the tiny cages, inadequate diets, and lack of information on bird care in general. It's no wonder that the donated birds spoke rarely, if at all. At that time, Mynah birds, naturally excellent mimics, were out star avian speakers.

Until only recently, parrots were also assumed to be merely mimics. Konrad Lorenz, an early animal behaviorist, once described a few instances of a cockatoo who seemed to be using words intelligently. This bird recognized and correctly identified a curassow, though he had not seen another one for eight years. When this cockatoo was stolen and eventually recovered, he said, in a gruff voice, "get it into the bag!" Safe at home, he never uttered that sentence again.

There now seems to be proof that parrots can, and indeed do, use language, appropriately. Dr. Irene Pepperberg, of the University of Arizona, in Tucson, purchased a wild-caught African Grey from a pet store in order to study it's ability to learn language. She named the bird Alex. Alex has been trained by Dr. Pepperberg and her graduate students to identify objects by shape, color, and texture. If two objects are presented to him and he's asked if they're the same or different, he will not only tell you if they are, but also in what way. For example, if Alex is shown a red cube and a blue key, when asked "Same or Different?", Alex will reply, "Different." "Why"-"Color". "What Else?" - "Shape!" Because different people work with the bird, there is no possibility that Alex is responding to unconscious visual cues coming from one teacher. There are now two more African Greys in the study; these were purchased as handfed babies. They are learning to use words effectively as well, which proves that Alex's abilities aren't unique. Owners of pet parrots have been saying for many decades that their birds were aware of what they were talking about; now, there finally seems to be proof.

With the advent of these behavior experiments, controversy has followed. Many people have a hard time accepting creatures other than man as having innate intelligence, due to their own fundamental religious beliefs. Chimpanzees are physically unable to articulate words, no matter how diligently they are taught. However, when scientists realized that chimps taught each other by simple hand signals, a baby chimpanzee named Washoe was taught American Sign Language (Ameslan). Washoe successfully used so many signs, that she was able to even compose short sentences and train other chomps. The linguists were in an uproar, they not only couldn't believe that Washoe correctly used sign language; they also tried to say that Ameslan wasn't a "real" language. The gorilla baby, Koko, was even better at using sign language. Today, as an adult, Koko is still learning.

The learning of songbirds has been studied in the laboratory, as well as in the wild. Amazingly enough, canaries were found to grow entirely new brain cells, every year, during their molt. While molting male canaries sing very quietly, new glial cells are forming, which migrate to the learning centers of the brain. Canaries can learn new songs by hearing tapes during the molt. I've talked with some song canary breeders who were unaware of this change in the brain, yet have told me that this explained to them why some of their champions had poor songs the next season. The birds had forgotten what they'd learned.

This research has important medical applications. When a mammal has a head injury, it can't regrow new brain cells. If we can learn what makes canary brain cells grow, maybe we can regenerate human cells as well.

Why is it that parrots can learn to use words so successfully? Parrots already have some information, such as nesting behavior, "hardwired" into their brains; they don't need to learn it. In the wild, parrots teach each other where to find the most edible fruits and nuts, safe water sources, and mineral-rich soils. Parrots also signal each other when danger is near. Interestingly, though, handraised parrots vocalize more than their wild counterparts.

How do birds talk? Humans use the larynx and the expansion of the lungs (what singers refer to as the chest voice), as well as the tongue, lips, palate, and sinuses (the head voice), to create a complex variety of sounds. Birds, of course, don't have lips, and their tongues aren't flexible in the same way as ours, although parrots do seem to use their beaks and tongues to help articulate words. The larynx of a bird lacks vocal cords. At the bottom of the trachea (windpipe), birds produce sound in the syrinx. The shape of the syrinx and the sounds it emits are controlled by muscles attached to the bronchi.

Sounds are believed to be produced by the air forced through slots in the syringeal membranes. The pitch of the sounds is also determined by the length of the specie's trachea and the inflation of the air sacs. Some Passerines can produce two sounds simultaneously, by the control of air through each bronchus.

What gives parrots the capacity to learn so much? Right now, we don't really know. Some birds, such as hawks and owls, probably utilize larger parts of their brains in order to efficiently capture their prey. Information is processed from the eyes and ears; flight must be swift and accurate in order for prey to be captured. On the other hand, parrots forage for a variety of foods; their food doesn't need to be captured, but parrots have to remember where to find it again. They also have to remember how to locate their nests. Wild parrots pair off early, and pairs stay together within a flock of their own species. Communication seems to be an important part of mate recognition in a flock of identical-looking birds.