What parrots babble about: a new study by ornithologists
Researchers at the University of Texas compared the squeak of little parrots to baby talk.
It turns out that the chicks like to chat alone when the rest are sleeping. Some repeat intonations after their parents. Others make their own natural sounds that are unlike anything else.
Parrots usually begin to babble from the 21st day of life.
But that’s not all. In human babies, the stress hormone stimulates the development of communication skills. To test how stress affects parrots, ornithologists gave the chicks some corticosterone. It is the human equivalent of cortisol. Next, the researchers compared the dynamics with peers – chicks who were not given corticosterone.
As a result, the group of chicks given the stress hormone became more active. The chicks made more varied sounds. Based on this experiment, ornithologists concluded:
The stress hormone affects the development of parrots in the same way that it affects children.
This is not the first such study. Ornithologists from Venezuela set up special nests made of PVC pipes at the biological station and attached tiny video cameras that broadcast picture and sound. These observations of the chicks were joined by scientists from the University of Texas. They published their findings in the journal of the Royal Society of London Proceedings of the Royal Society B. This is an analogue of the Academy of Sciences in the UK.
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