The gray parrot of Gabon, a nice talker
Audio 02:39
The gray parrot is the most talkative bird in the world.
Pixabay / Maienkindfotografie
By: Florent Guignard
8 min
Gabonese Gray parrots have been placed in solitary confinement at a zoo in England for cursing visitors.
The Gabonese Gray, an endangered species in equatorial Africa, is the best-talking bird in the world.
A great imitator capable of interacting with humans.
Publicity
Shocking in England.
And the object of the scandal is a parrot.
A Gray from Gabon, also called Gray from Congo - you shouldn't upset anyone.
Five Jaco parrots, yet another name for Psittacus erithacus, caused a stir in a British zoo when they began to swear at staff and visitors.
So, to avoid shocking the children, the parrots were put in isolation.
Confined for insults and contempt.
The Gabonese Gray is the most talkative bird in the world, the champion of imitation.
That he is particularly good at swearing doesn't surprise Dalila Bovet, a researcher at the University of Paris-Nanterre.
“
They tend to repeat what they hear in an emotional context,
specifies the specialist in the behavior of psittacidae, the family of parrots.
And when a parrot will reproduce insults, it will make humans react.
And if he sees that he's doing something that makes people react, that makes us look at him or laugh, that makes him want to start over.
“Like a child… Several researchers who have worked on the Gabonese Gray compare its intelligence to that of a four-year-old human.
Several hundred words
The most talkative bird does not have a vocal cord, like humans, but a syrinx, "
a cartilaginous structure with membranes that vibrate to make sounds, according to the same principle as the vocal cords,"
explains Dalila Bovet.
To modulate the sounds, the parrot then uses the larynx, the trachea, but also for many the beak and the tongue, in the same way that we use the mouth and the position of the tongue to speak.
"
The Gray is a good talker… or rather an imitator, who thus shows a sign of attachment.
“
In nature, it can imitate the song of other birds.
He uses his vocalizations to communicate and maintain this bond of affection.
And it's the same phenomenon that occurs with humans when they are domesticated.
But does the parrot understand what it is repeating?
“
They understand a lot of things,
” says Dalila Bovet.
Several hundred words, according to the scientific work carried out for years by the American Irene Pepperberg with a Gray parrot from Gabon named Alex, famous to the point of having her Wikipedia page.
The most common ?
“
'Hello' when we arrive, 'goodbye' when we leave.
Grays associate words with particular contexts
, ”Dalila Bovet observed when she was working on Grays from Gabon.
A long apprenticeship
"
We first used what is called the intuitive method, that which is practiced spontaneously with children, by repeating certain words and insisting on them," says the ethologist.
We also used a method called repetition-association, where it is a matter of dissociating the word from the object it designates.
We stand in front of the parrot to repeat the word button, for example, dozens of times.
And in a few days, or a few weeks of rehearsing, with any luck he'll say pimple.
It is then that he is presented with a button, so that he associates the word and the object.
This is the method that has worked best with our birds.
"
Alex, the parrot of Irene Pepperberg, was able to carry on a conversation, but despite this intelligence, the gray parrot of Gabon is not able to make up sentences.
“
He can repeat sentences that he understands the meaning of because of the context in which he was taught them.
But he is not able to abstract the grammar that might allow him to form new sentences.
"
An endangered species
This talent for speaking made the success of the Gray parrot of Gabon, one of the most domesticated parrots in the world, to the point of causing its demise;
the animal is today an endangered species, threatened by trafficking and deforestation in tropical Africa.
Dalila Bovet recalls that the domesticated parrot isolated from a human has a tendency to depress, to tear off its feathers.
This is the reason why trade in these wild birds has been banned for three years, even though pet stores sell farmed parrots.
The Gray of Gabon is not made to live at home, but in its nature.
♦ Question of the week
"Do we know all the animals living on the planet? "
Oh no, dozens of new species are discovered every year (and this is also the case for plants).
We have just identified in France a small crustacean in the creeks of Marseille.
He has no eyes, useless, since he lives in complete darkness: in an underground river, muddy and muddy.
And in this hostile environment, the only food he finds is suitable for his size (two millimeters): bacteria.
Enjoy your meal !
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