Almost all species of parrots are capable of talking, although some of them are better at it than others. Part of the secret of the loquacity of these birds lies in the fact that they are naturally inclined to a flock lifestyle and, deprived of the opportunity to communicate with other parrots, make people members of their flock, trying to find a common language with them.
The vocal apparatus of birds is somewhat similar to that of a human. Their lower larynx performs the same function as the vocal cords in humans, and the very process of pronouncing sounds in humans and birds has many features in common. A special feature of parrots is their ability to memorize and reproduce new sounds. Those. if other birds use common sound signals and do not learn new songs, because they do not need it, then parrots try to memorize human speech and learn to imitate it in order to become full-fledged members of the flock.
The frequency of sounds that parrots can make is usually close to the average frequency of a woman's voice, and therefore some species of these birds are often not able to simulate a man's speech believably enough. Driven by their natural urge to imitate, they can play other sounds, including a phone ringtone or a dog barking. This is partly due to the fact that in their natural habitat, young parrots try to pronounce the same sounds as older birds, but in a human house they are deprived of the company of their own kind and are forced to imitate everything they hear.
Interestingly, some parrots can speak with a specific purpose: for example, in this way they try to attract the attention of a person or expect to receive a reward. These birds are unusually quick-witted, and some of them can memorize entire sentences or even short texts. Their causal relationship is very well developed, so parrots quickly notice the reaction of people to certain words and remember it. Through a series of experiments, scientists have been able to find out that parrots are able not only to pronounce words, but even to understand what exactly they mean. So, African gray parrots, which are famous for their ability to impeccably imitate human speech down to intonation, can memorize the names of more than a hundred objects and even understand what word means what. If you give such a parrot a treat for every thing he correctly named, he will very quickly learn to speak.
