Why do parrots talk? For some, mimicking talent may be for addressing individuals

Posted by Bridget in Biology, Life

Courtesy of Public Library of Science and World Science staff

Though a parrot might not understand any words it is saying toward you, there is a good chance its aim is to address you individually, new research suggests.

A study indicates that at least some parrots’ talent for mimicking sounds, which underlies their ‘talking’ skill, functions in nature to let them communicate with individual parrots they encounter.

Thorsten Balsby of the University of Aarhus, Denmark and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen studied one parrot species, the orange-fronted conure.

In the wild, these birds live in dynamic flocks where individuals flit in and out, so each parrot encounters many different individuals daily, the researchers noted. Each bird also has its own unique call.

Both in the wild and in the researchers’ experiments, parrots that heard an imitation of their own calls responded more often and faster to the calling individual than parrots that did not hear this imitation, according to the scientists.

‘I’m talking to you!’

Based on these observations, they suggest that the parrots may have evolved their abilities as mimics so they could start ‘conversation’ with a specific individual by mimicking their call. The findings were published on 21 November in the research journal PLoS One.

‘Given that orange-fronted conures frequently communicate within large communication networks with many potential receivers, which may be from several different flocks, the ability to selectively address specific individuals may be of particular importance’ to them, the scientists wrote.

‘Many species of parrots live part of their lives in social flocks and vocal imitation in parrots may, therefore, have evolved, to enable addressing of specific individuals in communication networks with high turnovers involving many different individuals.’

Balsby and colleagues also noted that a few animals, including dolphins and spectacled parrotlets, have been found to possibly ‘label’ or ‘name’ companions using signature calls. However, such a skill might have limited value in the conures’ social system because these birds interact with too many different individuals, including strangers, the scientists proposed. In contrast, for the conures, vocal imitation affords a flexibility that ‘allows for the addressing of specific individuals with which the addressor has only a limited knowledge,’ they argued.

They added that ‘the hunter-gather life style of early humans’ may have had some similarities with the shape-shifting social structure of the conures, suggesting one possible reason why sophisticated communication evolved in both species.

Source: World Science, http://www.world-science.net