The chirps and squawks of a parrot’s call may appear to the untrained ear to be just a random series of notes among the symphony of sounds in the areas where they inhabit. But it is not at all the case.
In addition to having significance, some of the cries made by parrots could not be more significant to them.
Humans only needed to do a little decoding to figure that out.
While it’s long been known that parrots in captivity learn and mimic sounds around them, researcher Dr. Karl Berg set out to study how that process takes place in the wild. In doing so, he set his sights on green-rumped parrotlets, a chatty species of parrot native to the savannas and forests of Venezuela.
What Dr. Berg found was that not only do wild parrots learn new songs and sounds, they appear to acquire one very important sound in particular.
Dr. Berg needed to create blended green-rumped parrotlet families to test the hypothesis that whether young parrots acquired noises from their parents or if they simply inherited them as instinct. He successfully turned the wild parrots in his study into foster parents by covertly swapping eggs from the nesting boxes they used.
Dr. Berg observed the nesting boxes while using recording equipment as the parrot parents hatched, reared, and—most importantly—sang to their young.
Parrot communication in the wild from Karl Berg on Vimeo.
Interestingly, Dr. Berg found that when the foster babies began singing for themselves, they sounded more like their foster parents than natural ones. They were learning! And more fascinating yet, each baby’s learned song varied slightly from the others, making it a unique identifier.
In other words, the song they learned from their parents was, in essence, their very own name.
These names go on to serve an important role throughout each parrot’s life, both as a way of announcing who they are and to know when another parrot is talking to them.
Unique identifiers do come in handy, after all.
The songs of these parrots resonating in the forests of Venezuela take on new significance in light of Dr. Berg’s study decoding their cries and how they are taught. They are tuneful representations of the love and care they got from their parents rather than merely noises hardwired by instinct.
What’s a name worth? A loving legacy left behind for both humans and green-rumped parrotlets.
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