• Question from:Beth Turner

Hi,

I was watching a documentary the other night and started wondering why parrots speak in captivity but not in the wild.  Then this question occurred to me?  Do parrots live in flocks?  If they do is is possible that they speak in captivity because they are trying to communicate with their new "flock" the way they would in the wild (ie repeat other parrots calls).

Is this possibly the reason?

Thanks!

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  • IVPP, Beijing
  • Posts: 612

I imagine that's a large part of it. Many parrots are good mimics and simply copy any sounds that they hear. Obviously when living as pets this means they copy human speech or TV show theme tunes (really!) or anything they hear often enough. In the wild, they will often copy other bird songs or animal noises or even sounds like waterfalls etc.

Some use this to help attract a mate. By having a wide range of sounds in theri repetoire, they can demonstrate that they must be healthy. Only a healthy and well fed bird could have the time to spend learning new calls when the less good ones are spednign all their time trying to find food. Denied these in captivity they copy whatever else they can hear.

Of course some parrots are also really cleaver and might simply be copying sounds becuase then can and consider it soem form of playing or entertainment.