galeriagila wrote:That totally rings true, Pajarita. He does pick up and drop words, noises, etc.
And I really must stick to my belief that he isn't very bright, as parrots go. Maybe mimicry can be a sort of innate/unlearned/either-there-or-not, and not related to adaptive intelligence kind of thing.
I think that's the case for the Rb, anyway.
I really do not know why some birds pick up a huge number of words and others don't - or why some of them speak cognitively and others don't -although I do believe that this is mostly due to the way they were taught but also to the higher intelligence of the individual bird. Sweetpea is my resident genius when it comes to talking. This bird knows when to use the phrase or word that he uses for an action even if I use another one. He actually makes the connection between two completely different phrases that would, in reality, mean the same thing. For example, his phrase for stopping a wrong action is: "STOP IT!" (which was obviously said to him whenever he bit). Now, ever since Pookey became scared of other birds, every time one perches on her cage, she starts making these very distinctive low cra cra noises so, when I am in the kitchen and I hear her, I say: "What's going ooooon?!" But it's only when she continues that I walk over to the door and looking out tell whichever bird in on to "SHOOO!" preceded by the bird's name but it's usually Davy and Sweetpea that are the guilty ones. And, this morning, it must have been Davy who was doing it because, when I said "What's going ooooon?" I heard Sweetpea saying: "STOP IT!" to him