March 16, 2021 • 51 mins
If you think parrots are simply mimics that fly, you're wrong. Tune in and learn about these colorful friends today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio Cale and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Trills a Lot Bryant, and there's
Jerry Roland, who's bright plumage is sticking me in the
(00:25):
face right now. And this is that was a great part. Uh.
And this is Stuff you Should Know about parrots, which
is a surprisingly interesting topic. Chuck. Nice one, nice pick.
That's good. Just do that, dude, the whole time. We're
gonna we're gonna hammer out like a means of communication,
just with that sound throughout this episode. Okay, oh, man'd
(00:48):
be kind of great. You already broke character, Chuck, I
think to the relief of every single person listening to
So you were surprised, huh yeah, I mean, I know
parents are knee or whatever, but I and I knew
that they were probably one of the smartest animals, or
some of them are. Some are just you know, dumb
as door knobs, but there are plenty that are really smart.
(01:10):
They make up for the really dumb ones. Um. But
I just I know I didn't know that they were
quite this this neat and also one of my new
favorite things is like watching little happy birds run like
hop around and sing. And there's a lot of parrots
that do that. It's like one of their traits, Like
they're really cute. Uh kind of animal. I love it.
(01:34):
In your mid forties, you're turned onto the joy of
birds chirping and jumping around. I didn't say I was
turned on by it, turned onto it. Oh gosh, there's
a big difference between those two. Uh. Have you ever
had any experience with parrots or known bird people? Uh? No,
(01:55):
so tangentially I was um UM's grandma has or had
a parrot. She passed a year or so ago, but
her parrot is still alive. Um she had a couple,
Brutal and Brutus, and Brutal was fine, but Brutus terrorized
you me when she was growing up, I mean like
terrorized her. And they didn't see her for many years.
(02:16):
And when I was when I visited and met her
grandma and Brutus, Brutus like at first was just kind
of like oh hum. And then he you could tell
the moment he recognized Jumie and he lunged at her.
He was like, you, I remember you. After all those years,
he still just did not like umi for some reason. Yeah.
I mean, I've got some parrots and bird stuff that
(02:38):
I'll pepper throughout when it's applicable. But you know, bird folks,
I mean, if you're a bird person. My experience has
been bird people are just sometimes a little eccentric. Oh yeah.
Bird people are definitely a certain type, just like cat
people are a certain type and dog people are certain types.
But there's a lot of people and dog people sure. Yeah, yeah,
(02:58):
I think that's one of the things that makes bird
people seem eccentric is there's far fewer of them. But
you know, one of the things I didn't realize it
could be. That could be also like the extensive stacks
of paperback fantasy novels that just line their floors throughout
their house. That too. Yeah. But one of the things
that I didn't realize is that birds are the fourth
(03:20):
um fourth most popular pet in the United States, which
makes sense if you think about it, But I never
really thought about all mine. Mine just stops after dogs,
which are number one. Yeah, I mean dogs, cats, what
is it? Fish? And then birds. I would expect goats
to be somewhere on there, but I think people just
love seeing goats and not necessarily owning them. Yes, sure,
(03:44):
but I think a lot of people who own birds
come especially parrots, come to feel the same way after
they've bought a parrot, as we'll see. Yeah, so should
we dig into this thing I thought we already had.
So there are a lot of different kinds of parrots. Uh,
they are, I mean, they're close to four hundred species
(04:07):
of the order. And I'd look this up in a
couple of places. Uh, citize for mese. Mm hmm, what
did you get? Uh, yeah, I thought you were gonna
say Citi signs, but yeah, that's that's how I would
have said it, okay. Uh, And we're talking like you know,
if you think of a parrot, you probably think of like, oh,
it's a macaw or an African gray. But if you've
(04:30):
seen a parakeet or a lorikeet, or a cockatiel or cockatoo,
those are all parrots as well. Yeah, so I love
birds as well. There's there's a lot of different kinds
of birds that are parrots, and um, some of them
just don't even really look like it. You're like, no,
that's an eagle, or I think that's a kind of vulture.
Like they're very they're really varied um order um. But
(04:52):
they all have in common a couple of things that
will see, one of which is a short beak that's
curved usually uh, which is very very powerful. And then
they also have a certain kind of toe arrangement called
the zygodactyl toe arrangements talk more about in a little bit,
but other than that, they are really kind of very
like I was saying, in size and shape and color um,
(05:15):
and even down to some kinds of species. They can
be varied among the male and the female so much so.
I think there's one, Oh, I can't remember which one
it was, um, but it was a kind of parrot,
smallish parrot where the males and the females look so
totally different color wise that they were thought to be
different species for a very long time. That's right, that's
(05:36):
the Solomon Island electus. Thank you, show off, but thank you.
So you know, like you said, they vary in size.
There are some that are so big, like uh, the
Coca poa in New Zealand that can be like a
seven pounder. Did you see any videos of those guys?
They're great. They can't even fly there so big, No,
they don't. They don't even they bound along their wings.
(06:01):
They don't work for flying, but they use them for
stability because they mostly climb trees. But they're yeah, they're
ground dwelling. They look like little furry or feathery mammals
basically sort of. I don't know why that hasn't been
a Disney character yet. I don't either, because they also
seemed to be very sweet. I saw some uh New Zealand, um,
(06:22):
like I guess researchers who were tracking them, and I
don't even think they put this one Coca poa under
when they took a blood sample. It was just laying
in their lap and I think it was just like
just basically like yeah, just hanging out, you know, like
go ahead, just take the blood and let me let
me go again. So they're super super chill um. But yeah,
they would make a perfect Disney character for sure. Yeah.
(06:44):
So those are the big daddies. Um. There are ones
from New Guinea that are just a few inches, way
less than an ounce. I think the highest Innthe macaw
is generally the biggest just in size. Uh. They can
be three and a half feet long. Um, they can
have four with wingspans and I think the kind of
trademark characteristic when you think of parrots though, or the
(07:06):
vibrant colors. Um, you know, some are like the gray
African gray is mainly just gray that has a little
bit of red. But when you think of parrots, you
think of those really brightly colored blues and greens and
reds and little rosy cheeks and stuff like that. Yeah, which,
and I mean they're obviously the reason why parrots have
very bright colors is to attract mates. Like that's basically
(07:28):
the reason for anything to have a bright color, unless
it's showing that it's poisonous. And as far as we've
ever found, parrots are not poisonous. But one of the specialties,
do you think, right, dead by dawn? One of the
specialties of the pigments in parrots. It's apparently not found
(07:49):
in other birds. The chuck is that those pigments have
antibacterial properties, which I guess keep them from getting like
wing rot or something like that. Yeah, there's um, there's
so I think it's called citico boy, here we go.
Citico Fulvin's are those pigments, and they're found only in
(08:10):
parts There aren't even any other birds to have these. Yeah,
But I mean other birds have colors, but they don't
have that specific kind of anti bacterial agent color pigment, right,
that's right. And you mentioned the toes. That is a
um you know, along with I think like owls and woodpeckers,
and I think there are some other birds that hive
these zygodactyl feet. But that means they have the usual
(08:33):
four toes, but most birds have three in one arrangement,
like three up front, one in the back. In this case,
they have two upfront, two in the back. So Juliet
helped us put this together, and she basically points out
that like this means they have two sets of opposable thumbs.
So that's why they're really good climbers, and they can
hold on to a branch like it's you know, until
(08:55):
the sun comes up dead by down style exactly. And
if you've ever seen a parrot work a nut or
seed or something with the combination of the beak in
those four toes, it's pretty pretty dexterrous. Yeah. That's also
again how those coca posts can climb trees without any
ability to fly. They I mean, they can maneuver, they
(09:17):
can hang and believe there's an upside down hanging type
of parrot, which I'm not sure why it hangs upside down,
maybe just to show off that it has zygodactyl toes.
But they can do a lot with those things. And yeah,
in combination with their beak there, they're really working it.
Apparently their beak as well. Um, that sharp, short curved
(09:37):
beak that that all parrots have is extremely powerful. Um.
They move independently of one another lower beak in the
upper beak, so it can exert a lot of force. Um.
And and that really helps out because a lot of
their food are like really hard nuts and seeds and
things like that, but they they're nothing in the face
(09:58):
of a parrots beak. Yeah, it's if you've ever been
chopped down on by a parrot, it's rough. Yeah, they'll
take a chunk of skin out. Yeah, they were. When
I worked in Arizona, that restaurant in Yuma, Julianna's Patio Cafe.
It was an outdoor cafe and they had the owner, Julia,
(10:18):
had parrots and I think they were like five of them,
just kind of behind where you eat on these stands,
not even caged. And they were mean, the snakes, not
to her they were, but if you were not her
and you went up and you were like, oh, let
me give you a little ear scratch. One of those
things could just fly its little head around and chop
(10:41):
down on your finger and it feels like it's in
a vice. Yeah, well you're lucky. They could have taken
your finger clean off. Probably there's there's anecdotal stories that, um,
that we are not able to verify. But this, it's
definitely worth mentioning that a large parrot could snap a
broomstick with its beak, which is, if you read it,
(11:04):
it's really impressive. When you say it out loud, you
feel very foolish a little bit. I mean, sure, I
guess it depends on the broom but it's it's really old, rotted,
termite rotted broomstick. Yeah, let's just say it's really really
a lot of force. Um, and my finger can vouch
for that. Was that some of the peppering you alluded
(11:25):
to earlier, that's one one kind of pepper, one grain
of pepper. Got I had a bird that'll come up later.
I can't wait for that one. Um. So Chuckie, you're
saying that, like, um, they wouldn't bite Julia Julianna Julianna
Julia because she was part of their flock. As we'll
see um. And it turns out that there are some
(11:48):
parrots get along with other species of parrots and even
other species of birds and other kinds don't so much
so that when you read like a parrot owner's guide,
they're basically like, if you're gonna get you know, other
birds do not get this kind with this kind. And ironically,
love birds are famously mean to other species of birds.
(12:08):
But if you're in their flock, then you're you're one
of them. And that's one thing that one reason why
parrots make such great pets for so many people is
because they imprint with humans really well, and are you're
just a member of their family and they're a member
of your family. That's just the way it is to
the parrot. If you're an outsider interloper, yeah, they'll take
your finger off like it's an old broomstick. So Yumi
(12:31):
was never ingratiated herself, I I guess not, which just
surprising because everybody likes you, you know, I know, like
animals flocked to her like snow white. Basically, yeah, she's
always she's got this lamb following around. Now. I don't
know where that thing came from. It is cute, it
is the lambing is coming soon, unfortunately for the boy.
(12:51):
Uh well, let's take a little break there then and
we'll come back and talk a little bit about Uh,
parrots in the wild. Want to learn about astortic how
to take the perfect, but all about fractal get Kiscon's
hunt the Lizzie Border murders. That they kind of all
runs on the plane every day. We should know. Word up, Jerry. Okay,
(13:27):
So Chuck, we were talking. We're going to talk about
parrots in the wild UM, which is where they used
to be um more often than not, and still are.
Like there's something like three hundred and about three hundred
and sixty known species of parrots UM. But a lot
(13:47):
of them are dying off really quick, as we'll talk about.
But the thing about parrots were learning is that they're
really resilient, Like they can adapt and find homes and
make homes for themselves in new climates. So you'll find
them typically in their preferred area around the tropics, around
the equator, typically in the southern hemisphere, but you're also
(14:09):
going to find them like living up in mountain ranges,
high up on rocky outcrops. Um. You'll find them in
Chicago's Hyde Park. There's a bunch of Connecticut. They're kind
of all over the place. Even though no native species
UM from the United States are are still around, there's
still plenty of like wild feral parrots that live out
(14:29):
in the US. Yeah. When I was in Australia, UM,
we had a couple of down days and you know,
my buddy Scotty, our friend Scotty, came over to join us,
and um we Scotty and I went down to wine
country south of south of Melbourne, which is just some
of those beautiful land I've ever seen in my life.
(14:50):
And we were at a wine winery overlooking this huge
vineyard and then like the sort of woodland jungle, and
I saw these huge white birds flying around down there,
and we were the only people there. We were there
in the off season, so everywhere we went, we were
the only two people kind of tasting. And so we got,
you know, to hang out with the the winemakers, which
(15:11):
is cool, and they said, uh, there was a cockatoose
and I was like, I was just a naive American.
I didn't know they just flew around Australia like that.
And I said, just so you know those like they
sell those in stores for a lot of money in
the United States, And I said, it's just crazy to
me that they're just flying around. Yeah, apparently there was
(15:33):
a time not terribly long ago where you could see
beautiful green cockatoos um or parakeets i'm sorry, flying around
the United States until we drove them to extinction about
a hundred or so years ago. Yeah, the Carolina went
in there, a North Carolina parakeet, the Carolina parakeet. Yep.
It was just this gorgeous, green, beautiful parakeet that was
(15:56):
native to the United States. Um and I saw some things. So,
you know. Passenger pigeons were also famously um uh, driven
to extinction. The last Carolina parakeet died in the same
cage that the last passenger pigeon, Martha died in at
the Cincinnati Zoo. So the Cincinnati Zoo had the honor
of keeping captive the last passenger pigeon and the last
(16:19):
Carolina parakeet and killing them. Right, They had this one
zookeeper who was in charge of strangling the last one
just to give it over with because they couldn't couldn't
stand the tin in any longer. You know, They're like,
just get it over with. Oh, I've got a joke
that is, so I'm not going to tell because I
would upset bird lovers, So tell me later. I'll tell
you later. Uh So, these parents, they mainly stay up
(16:44):
in the trees. Obviously, they do come down if they
were going to drink something and sometimes if they need
to find something to eat if they can't get it
up there, And they generally do this kind of follow
the humans patterns of kind of hanging out and doing
the stuff during the day and sleeping at night unless
you're a coca peo or a night parrot, and they
are nocturnal, which is um. I think they're the only
(17:06):
two of the species. What's neat about those coca posts?
Who is um? They be from being nocturnal, the eyes
have migrated from the sides of their heads towards the
front of their face, and they've developed this kind of
puffy feathers around their eyes. So they're also known as
the owl parrot because they've started to kind of resemble
the owl, and the owl is typically nocturnal as well.
Are you going to get a Coca peo. I think
(17:27):
I might. Actually, there's only a hundred and fifty left me.
I could probably be arrested, but at the very least,
I'm going to give it a shot. You know. So
they are omnivores and they will generally eat seeds and
nuts and plants and fruits and things and insects. But
if they need to eat, you know, a parrot's gonna
do what a parent's gonna do. This is crazy, and
(17:48):
this is you know, this can cause problems. I think
the African gray can feast on corn, which has caused
problems with corn crops in New Zealand. This is the
crazy part. Uh. In the kind of mid eighteen hundreds
in New Zealand, keys k e a s We're discovered
to be and this is sort of horrifying. Eating sheep
(18:11):
and attacking sheep in the middle of the night. Yes, well,
I guess it was in the middle of the night
because they're not they're not nocturnal. But in my mind,
it's a horror movie and it happens in the middle
of the night to me the most, the like the
middle of the day makes things even more horrific. Things
aren't bad. Things aren't supposed to happen in the middle
of You're supposed to happen at night in the woods,
you know, good point, not not in the middle of
(18:33):
a field in the day. So seeing some parrots attack
and eat a sheep in the middle of the day,
that's bad news. But those things, actually they look a
lot like eagles more so than parrots to me. So
you give them a pass. Yeah, that's fine. What I'd
like to see. I'd like to see them all try
to carry off a sheep together with teamwork, you know,
(18:56):
But I don't think that's how it goes. Well, there's
your cartoon that's like a ziggy cartoon. I think they
I think they put parrot repellent on because you know,
they back in the day, they would just kill them
all and let God sort of ount. That's what happened
to the Carolina parrot key. Yeah exactly. But they, you know,
eventually they were like, we can't just kill these keys,
(19:19):
Like we're a more evolved you know, humankind at this point,
and we got to stop this stuff. We gotta protect them.
So they've looked for ways to to keep from having
to do that, and one of them is that parrot
repellent on the cheep's bellies, which it's probably like that
stuff you tried to use on your fingernails to keep
from biting them. I used to coat my fingers in that.
(19:41):
But you just slather in a sheep's belly and call
it a day. Yeah, it's very better. One thing I
did want to add though, when you were talking about
their range and they can end up in weird places.
I remember when we would do commercial shoots in Pasadena, California,
and we would have the Unlucky Parrot Location, which is
basically anywhere in Pasadena. On any given day, you could
(20:03):
be near a bunch of parrots making a ton of
noise and you can't shoot, You know how it is
with sounds like you can't you can't pay the guy
to turn off his blower or his lawnmower. Yeah, but
you can't. Yeah, I want two and free reign at
the craft services table. But yeah, those uh, those Pasadena parrots,
(20:26):
they have disrupted many film shoot so um. Yeah. So
you're like, well, wait a minute, there's not native parrots
in the United States. How are there a bunch of
parrots in the trees in Pasadena? Well, people let their
parents go, or people die in their parrots escape or
what have you. Um And like I was saying before,
it's like they're really resilient. And once they start forming
(20:48):
breeding pairs, even though they have like a really low
reproduction rate. Um as we'll see in a second, they
they can they can survive. They can make new niches
for themselves, which is pretty cool. But they're all there's
there's a lot in Florida, Texas, and California. I think
every kind of species that has a population is supported
(21:11):
in all three of those states. Right in the Connecticut
one is just a that's a very weird thing. Yeah.
In Chicago's Hyde Park too, it's like the roof caves
in on people's houses in the winter in Chicago. There's
so much snow and it's so cold, Like, how are
parrots surviving? But apparently they do. It's crazy, so they
(21:33):
live And this is this is pretty great. This is
where stuff you should know things intersect or love of uh,
collections and groupings of animals, sounds of assemblage. Yeah, pandemonium
of parrots is what it's called. For good reason, like
I said, because they are super noisy and can be
aggravating in large numbers. When they're out in the wild
and they live together, they help each other out, they
(21:56):
feed with each other, they look out for each other,
they keep track of each other, and they communicate with
each other. All those squawks and screams that you hear
when a bunch of when a pandemonium is gathered, is
them talking to each other. And they might be saying,
you know, film crew, or they might be saying snake
or monkey like look out. Yeah. I also have the impression,
(22:18):
from spending hours and hours of watching beautiful parrots of
all types seeing and be happy um that that they're
just basically sharing how they're feeling at any given points
sometimes too, and that a lot of times it's real positive.
You know, they're talking about how great things are beautiful
the day is. I could be anthropomorphizing, but it really
(22:39):
really seems that way. They just seem like kind of
a happy, happy type of animal. I'm like, I want
to buy into that too. I'm with you. Just go ahead.
It's like, prove me wrong. I'll give you ten years,
and in those in the ten year span, I'll enjoy
these parrots for what I think they're doing. I agree.
I mean, we all laughed at you early on, and
(23:00):
now she's got that lamb following her around, right like
miracles can happen. We have to get some of that
um that nail biting stuff to slather on the lamb's
belly in case it runs into some keys. Uh. So
they mate and they have little babies. They are generally monogamous,
and males and females work together to raise the kid
(23:23):
and to care for the little baby. From the moment
that it's an egg, they will sit on it for
eighteen to thirty days and even take turns. I think
the mom usually does most of the sitting while the
male goes out and get some food. But the male
can also be like, why don't you why don't you
stretch your leg, you stretch your toes? Yeah exactly, so
(23:45):
um yeah, But for the most part, the male gets
the food or something like that. But the um lovebirds
also are like famously monogamous, and they so much so
that when they're separated, when a breeding pair of separated,
when they're brought back together, um all, first of all,
they'll start to like lose energy and get real depressed
and sad. And then when they're brought back together. They
(24:06):
reform their bond by feeding one another with their beak.
It's very cute, isn't That's sweet? Um? Yeah, I kind
of have have a thing for love birds now. They're
just super cute and pretty and so you know what,
you know, what birds are not monogamous, which one's casual
sex birds raw lowbirds. Yeah, but good for them, you know.
(24:28):
So sure they're just out there doing their thing, not
hurting anybody, as long as they're upfront about what they're
in there for. You know, Rob Blow, is this from
his sex scandal from like years ago. No, I just
think of Rob Blow is like being difficult to pin
down and you know, love and life, having having a
good time, just doing his thing. That's what I think.
(24:49):
He's really worked to change that image over the past
three decades. He really has not with me, but I
recognize what he's been trying to do. Okay, famous lothario
Rob Blow. Oh well, I also dated myself because I
would say a good third of our listeners are like,
who's this Rob Low guy. It's like, oh yeah, that's right,
he was, so they might know them. I was gonna say,
(25:12):
it's like Mad magazine making fun of Spiro Agnew when
we were little, and we're like, who who is the
Spiro Agnew? Right? To us, Rob Low is the sax
player from st Almost Fire who made a sex tape
to them. He's the happy dad and uh Parks and
wreck guy. I also think of him as literally dude
(25:32):
from um west Wing. I don't remember what his character's
name was, No need to email, I can look it
up myself. I never saw that show. Oh you didn't.
It's good. I think you'd like it, all right. Even
if you don't like Aaron Sorkin, you'd like west Wing.
He's a little wordy for me, Yeah, sure, yeah, a little,
(25:52):
a little over the top every single second of every
single show. But west Wing was his. It was. It
just worked perfectly for him. Yeah. I don't want to
knock Aaron Sorkin. I'll just say he has a fondness
for typing. But so there was this one, this one,
this one Rob Low sketch on Sara Live. I know
we've talked about before, but remember when Aaron Sorkin was
(26:13):
busted with mushrooms in the airport. No, so this that
news came out on a week when Roblow was hosting
Sara Live. So they did one of those famous like
walk and talk shots from West Wing and in the background,
suddenly suddenly it converts from like the West Wing that
they're walking through and now they're being chased in a
black and white movie by a giant like iguana. And
(26:35):
so they they're still walking talking about, you know, the
administration of the president, but they're also kind of jogging
running away looking behind them at this giant iguana has
really really great stuff. So how many breaks have we taken? Charles?
Just one? Do you want to take another one? Or
keep going a little more? I think maybe let's wait
(26:56):
one minute. Let's talk about their uh intelligent and altruism,
and I think that's those are two lovely topics. Well,
before we do that, I've got one more thing about mating.
So um they actually when they reproduce, they'll they'll lay
between like two and eight eggs at a time, and
their incubation period can be really fast, like eighteen days
thirty days. But they also usually only have a couple
(27:19):
of um chicks survive, and they spend a lot of
time and energy raising their young almost to a humanlike degree,
not not for eighteen years, but for up to like
four years. In some cases, the offspring, the chicks will
you know, grow up with the parents. Um, so they
actually have a very low reproductive rate. So it's a
big problem when humans come along and you know, kill
(27:42):
off pair of populations because they're slow to recover. They're
slow to reproduce. So just put that that little pin
in your hat and smoke it. I just can't get
that one right these days. So parents are super smart,
like we talked about. And there are a couple of
really great examples of how and how they display this.
And one is is they can use tools like they
(28:05):
have seen parrots use sticks to like scratch their heads
and stuff like that. Uh, this one is amazing. They
found that cockatoos have been observed using sticks to drum
on logs as part of a courtship sort of mating ritual.
Because nothing women love more than a drum solo. You know,
I know it really just every woman alive thinks of
(28:28):
drum solo is the greatest musical thing you can do.
That's usually when I go to the bathroom to Yeah,
I mean it's a hats off, but yeah, it's just
kind of whatever that don't happen much anymore. No, you
don't see those, but um, the one that knocked my
socks off, chuck was Um, there's at least oh the
greater vassa parrot. They will use little pebbles or whatever
(28:53):
to grind up seashells, and the male does this, and
the male will eat the seashell and re urgitated into
like this vomity calcium rich paste as an offering to
pair of female he's trying to make with, which sounds
gross and weird until you realize that other birds eat
calcium rich shells or chew on them or whatever to
(29:15):
to strengthen the shells of their own eggs. But parrots
are the only known birds to actually use tools to
grind the shells up to make them easier to digest.
And the males offering it to the woman is a
like a basically like, hey, look at how well I'm
taking care of you and our kid. I'm regurgitating seashells
for you that I'm grinding up. That's astounding tool used.
(29:39):
Like you just do not see that elsewhere except in
like maybe primates here there. Well, I mean, if you
want to talk about cool, their altruism is something that
you don't see much in the animal kingdom at all.
Um very few non human species show this trait, and
no birds before just a couple of years ago. We're
even on this list. They even tested crows out because
(30:00):
they're super smart, I think in and they gave them
an altruism tests and they're like, nope, you guys failed
the test. But they did this. And this was from
just January of last year in current biology, ironically, like
just a couple of months before the coronavirus hid. They're like,
they don't have anything to talk about this month exactly,
(30:23):
they're doing some important work. And they did this um
exercise where they got these birds together, these parrots, and
that they put them in pairs and they basically put
a wall between them with a hole, and they were separated,
and one of them had a token and one of
them had that you would trade for food, but one
(30:44):
of them didn't. One of them had the food and
one of them had the token. So these birds literally
figured out how to work together to exchange like here,
you take this token because you've got the food, feed yourself.
But remember me, if the roles are ever reversed, right,
which is a totally different thing. It's a reciprocity. So
these these mccaus showed that there was it. The African
(31:06):
gray is the one that passed. Yeah, and they're typically
known as like possibly the smartest birds of all time.
But um, the like in addition to like, here you go,
have this, have the like, take this token and get
yourself some food even though I'm not getting anything back.
When the when the roles were reversed, the birds would
do the same thing, so they would get their turn
(31:27):
basically later on. And so yeah, you have altruism and
reciprocity tool use. Um. They're also very famous for mimicry too,
which a lot of birds can mimic sounds. I saw
a video of a minor bird um in the wild,
I guess being filmed with a camera as well as
a video camera, because it made an exact sound of
(31:48):
a digital camera taking a picture. It was astounding. It
sounded like they dubbed the sound of a camera over
this bird. I wonder about that on some of these videos.
This is I mean, I hope, but it was legit.
I mean it was. It looked like a legit wildlife
video or a clip from one. But a lot of
birds can do that. But the thing is other birds
(32:08):
can't do. What parrots can do is like their mimicry
is at a whole different level compared to other birds.
And they're basically the only bird we know of that
can mimic a human voice. I think that's a great
place for a cliffhanger, right, sure, all right, we'll come
back and we'll talk more about mimicry right after this.
I want to learn about a terrestortic college act how
(32:29):
to take the bird. But but all about fractals getting
Kiscon's hunt, the Lizzie Border murders, that they kind of
all runs on the plane every day. We should know.
Word up, Jerry. All right, so we're back and we're
(32:56):
talking about birds vocalizing and mimicking things. Uh, they have
voices that vary by region, which is really neat. They
have different dialects basically, and if a parent moves to
a new area where they have a different kind of dialect,
they will adjust, you know what Julia refers to as
their accents to fit in, which is really really amazing. Yeah,
(33:18):
it is amazing and apparent. I was reading up on
a study about that chuck and they found that a
bird that lives, like, these dialects will be kind of regional,
but some regions butt up against one another. So if
you're in a nest that um is adjacent to two regions,
they'll kind of use it. They'll go back and forth.
And they found like the differences in the basic structure
of the calls are different enough that that they're dialectical.
(33:41):
But then within these nests there's different variations, slighter variations
within the dialects, so like they're they're communicating into some
really astounding degrees. And like I was saying that, you know,
parrots in particular the only one smart enough to mimic humans.
And one of the reason is that they do this
is they're able to manipulate their tongue, which is one
(34:03):
of the things that we do to produce speech. So
they're not just they're not just mimicking a sound like,
they're actually forming words very similarly to how humans do. UM.
They are also capable of hitting like pitches, lower pitches
that are more in step with how human the human
voice sounds, so it sounds more like human that they're mimicking.
(34:26):
But then also they seem to have an additional layer
um in their brain and the region of their brain
that they used to to mimic um that other animals
don't have that other birds don't have, which implies that
they're just smart enough to do this too. Yeah. So
I had a cockateal. Oh some pepper. Everybody had a
(34:48):
cockateal when I was a kid. I was like, I mean,
I feel like we had this bird for a few years,
but I was definitely in the you know, ten eleven
twelve year old range, and our little gray cockateal was
named Dolly, and I, you know, knew that you could
teach cockatiels to say things. So I was, my brother
and I were all over this. You know, no one
else in the family really cared. But we got a
(35:10):
record to teach us how to do this. And it
involves tons and tons of repetition. You can't just go
up to a bird and teach it to say something
a couple of times and they'll do It. Requires a
lot of repetition, and so we taught. By the end,
Dolly could say hello and hello Dolly, and Dolly could
do the wolf whistle like uh oh yeah, like when
(35:31):
someone walked in the room, uh I. Dolly learned to
do the charge in it. And and then the one
I was most proud of is I taught Dolly to
do the co co co co like a jungle bird.
And it was my favorite thing that Dolly could do.
So Dolly would sit on my shoulder and like kind
(35:53):
of nibble up my ear lobes and watch TV and
stuff and peck at my hair and that was sort
of the ex tent of it. It was a tremendous mess.
Uh And you know, we're I guess we can go
and talk about that. If you have a a bird,
it's it's feathers and poop and seeds everywhere. Yeah. Well,
because when you have a parrot, you're supposed to give
(36:15):
it a lot of time outside of the cage, which
we'll we'll talk a little more extensively about that. But yes,
they're a big mass for sure. But Dolly learning to
talk was one of the coolest things I did as
a kid. And people love to hear parrots say things.
They if you go and type parrot into YouTube. The
third thing that comes down is the next offering is
(36:38):
parrots cursing, because it's just funny. People want to see
a parrot tell someone to you know, buzz off. Yeah,
buzz off if you're lucky, if they haven't lived in
a frat house for a few years. Um, more often
than not, they just straight up curse. And every once
in a while you'll see a story about some parrots
that had to be moved from like a wild I've
(37:00):
preserved because they were cursing at like the people who
came by to see them or whatever, and teaching little
kids bad manners. I mean, they're all kinds of videos.
It's it's very fun. Kids. Ask your parents if you
can watch parrot talking videos, because some of them curse.
Uh if there are some funny ones too with parrots
and alexis um talking to Alexa, and I think one
(37:24):
of them that was a parrot that the lady um,
the owner went back and ordered or was checking on
things that were ordered, because this parrot would order stuff. Yeah,
and the parrot kept trying to order a fart shopping
I don't know. I mean she just said what's on
the shopping list? And Alexa said, bird seed fart, Right,
(37:46):
that's pretty great. I want to know what Alexa would
would imagine that to be well, I mean, if I
think if you say to burp or fart they'll do it, right.
I don't know. I haven't tried that, but I'm going
to write after this, do you really haven't. I haven't
very impressed. I'm forty four years old and I've never
tried that. Al Right, well I'm almost fifty, so you'll
(38:06):
come back around and think it's funny again. You know
what's funny, Chuck? You have mastered one of the I
think sixty things that the Kama Sutra says every person
should master before they die, and that is to train
a parrot to talk is one of them. Yeah, I
had no idea I ran across that. So, um, we
can't talk about parents, and especially talk about parent intelligence
(38:30):
and not talk about Alex the parrot, which who we
have talked about before he showed up in our How
Zero Works episode, because he's, as far as anyone knows,
the I think, if not the only bird, possibly the
only other non human animal who's demonstrated a grasp of
(38:52):
the concept of zero. Um, that's a really weird concept
that that most non humans can't grasp, or possibly any
other non humans can't grasp, Alex could, which kind of
goes to show you what a smart part he was. Yeah,
I think they figured in the end, Alex was about
as smart as a five year old person, and uh
(39:13):
not from like the depth of vocabulary. Alex knew about
a hundred words, which is sounds like a lot compared
to Dolly. But I think the Guinness record is a
parakeet named Puck who learned about sevent dred words and change,
so a hundred is good. But Alex could understand concepts
like bigger and smaller and same and different, and would
(39:35):
make up his own word combinations, like I think the
first time Alex a cake, Alex called it yummy bread,
which is really pretty astounding and can maybe kind of scary.
He supposedly is the first animal to ask an existential question,
which he saw himself in the mirror, and he asked
(39:56):
what color? And so his his handler and researcher I
Irene Pepperberg, who wrote many, many papers from the seventies
to the early two thousands. UM about Alex, whose name
it turns out as an acronym for Avian language experiment.
It's a little saddened by that, you know, like the
robot whose name is like an acronym for someone science
(40:17):
E just kind of dehumanizing. UM. But Alex. Um, he
he asked like what color, and they took it to
mean like he was asking about himself, like he he
recognized himself in the mirror. And apparently parrots frequently talk
about themselves in third person, like that that parrot or
that para. Keep Puck hell right right, who held the
(40:44):
record for the most words, Um, he talked about himself
in third person. And apparently he once said it's Christmas
and that he was happy about it being Christmas, and
Puck loved everybody. That's great, Yeah, but I mean it's like,
that's pretty intelligent. If this parrot understands what that it's
Christmas day and everybody's happy that he loves everybody, it's
(41:07):
a I'm I'm just impressed with parrots. In addition to
being cute, they also have brains, brains and looks. That's right,
So I think we gotta at least talk about the
notion of pirates having parrots. Uh. It is not necessarily
just a movie trope or a book trope from literature.
It makes sense in a way. Um, they may have
(41:29):
wanted when they're out at sea some companionship having a
dog or a cat or a goat, or a lamb
following you around on a ship isn't a great idea?
Like a bird kind of makes sense. And they could
eat the hard attack and the crackers and and sip
on the rum, and it makes sense to have birds.
They were they were they were going places where they
(41:52):
might have been. Like I don't know if there's any
hard evidence, but nothing about it seems like there's no
way that could have been true. No, what what I
saw is that, um, that that's possibly the case, but
that the Age of Discovery was at the second time
that Europe fell in love with parrots as pets, and
that the initial trend started when Alexander the Great invaded
(42:14):
India and took some parrots back to Greece with them,
and they ended up spreading to Europe. And actually the
Alexandrine parrot is named after Alexander the Great because it's
apparently one of the ones that he brought back with them.
And then parents just I guess fell out of fashion.
And uh, then when people started going to like Brazil,
and and coming back from Brazil, they came back with
(42:34):
parrots on their shoulders and the trend started again. I
love it. I did mention that they were. They're not
the easiest pet to take care of, the air messy.
They are demanding, they're pretty needy. They need lots of attention.
If they don't get it, they can be kind of
disruptive and destructive. Uh, not trying to talk anyone out
of getting a bird, but it's a lot too lots
(42:56):
to bite off if you've never had one. Yeah, no,
it's I mean, like even even more of a commitment.
I would think then, say, like getting a dog, not
just because of the enormous amounts of attention that they
need from you, but they're really long lived too, Like
that's the deal. Much longer lived than than a dog
or a cat. Like like in in the wild, parrots
(43:17):
typically lived maybe thirty years. I think the the Cuca
po cuca po um lives possibly ninety years in the wild.
But in captivity parrots really live for a long time.
Um forty fifty sixty years. There was a major Mitchell's
cockatoon named Cookie. That's the oldest living documented parrot in captivity. Uh.
(43:40):
He lived to eighty three. I think, yeah, like you,
you often see parrots and people's wills because you have
to pass them along to somebody and yeah, for the
life of me Ida. I don't know what happened to Dolly.
We had Dolly for a few years. It's just kind
of one of those things when you're a kids sometimes
you have pets that just go away and your parents
are like, they're on the farm now, They're like Dolly,
(44:01):
who stop asking questions. Let's never speak of Dolly again.
Dolly may have gotten out, I don't know, but that happens.
I mean, they they escape sometimes. Um. I mean, Umey's
grandma's parent outlived her and they went to live with
one of her friends who keeps birds. So yeah, I mean,
like they're really long lived pets. But part of the
(44:24):
reason why they think that there are or why they
know there are feral parrot populations around the United States
is because people people just let them go. They're like,
I can't I had no idea what I was getting into.
Just fly free parrot. I'm sorry that we ever met.
It's like flushing that baby python down the toilet a
(44:44):
little bit, a lot bit actually, um. But the thing
is is it's kind of so it's it's good on
the one hand that that just doesn't automatically like kill
the parrot that they can Actually they might find like
a local population that they can join. They might find
another one and star to local population as a breeding pair. Um,
it's not like a death sentence to parrots, like you
(45:05):
should never you know, just release your pet into the wild.
That's that's just bad juju. But um, if you do
with the parrot, it's not It's not a death sentence,
is what I'm saying. One of the bigger problems of
that is that you have still placed to demand on
the bird market. Yes, and the bird market is not
(45:26):
like there's not some nice family in you know, the
central rural part of your state that breeds parrots, and
that's where all the parrots come from. The parrots that
you get typically have been stolen from a nest in
Brazil and brought to the United States. I saw something
like eight hundred thousand parrot chicks a year are removed
(45:47):
from nests to feed the demand of the exotic bird market. Um,
and a lot of them don't survive. They die on
the way. And as I was saying before, the reproductive
rate of parrots is low enough that once you get
enough chicks removed from their native habitats, they're not getting
replaced fast enough, and then that leads to a collapse
(46:08):
of the population and it can mean extinction if that
happens across the large enough range. Yeah, and there are
plenty of countries, including the United States, that have done
past legislation to try and put a dent in like
this importing and poaching and stuff. But at the beginning
of this year, there was a study in Global Change
Biology that said that a third apparent species are threatened
(46:30):
with extinction. I think a hundred and seventy one of
the species are near threatened or critically endangered. The cacapa
that you talked about, you mentioned that they're along like
a hundred and fifty of those left. Yeah, you really
don't want the cacapa to go extinct. Luckily, they're new
in New Zealand and New Zealand loves nature, so they're
in a good spot. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.
(46:53):
Are they trying to breed them? At least? I think
they're protecting the heck out of them and they're just
leaving them to breed amongst themselves. They live on three
isolated remote islands that don't have any introduced predators, so
they they're they're they're in a precarious place, but they're
in about as good a place as they could be
for the precarious state there in. Yeah, and it's you know,
it's not just people poaching. It's uh, humans encroaching with
(47:17):
developments and you know, less and less natural habitat. It's obviously, uh,
you know, the repercussions of climate change. When things like
the Australian wildfires break out, it's a reduction of habitat
and the poaching that's kind of put a real dent
in the para population. Yeah, so they're saying, well, you know,
there's there's so they've actually identified some hot spots of
parent biodiversity around the world that said like, Okay, if
(47:40):
these places, if the governments in these places like move
to protect parrots, parrots are going to be okay. Um,
So like the northeastern Andes, the Atlantic forest that stretches
from Brazil Inland and Argentina and Paraguay. Um, if these
places can can protect the parrots, their parents should be fine.
So hopefully they will. And then the demand side, uh,
(48:03):
if Europe in Japan will kind of get over their
love of parrots or figure out a different way to
get parrots a more sustainable way than that would have
a big effect to Are they two of the biggest
defenders from what I saw, Yeah, because that act the
US pass cut poaching and half um from what I
could tell, So it was like a really big had
(48:23):
a big impact. But Europe in japan'ss continued on without
that kind of legislation. I think it's great, well, not
great for them, but great for us. Up with parrots, everybody,
And if you want to get a little pop of
joy out of your day, watch this one minute video
called bird Sings in Synchrony with piano. Incredible cute, three
(48:44):
exclamation points not incredibly cute. It is one of the
sweetest things I've seen in a while. And you'll be like, yep,
Josh's right. Birds can just be happy little souls. Yeah,
or bird's cursing that's one too. Uh. Are you got
anything else that? Nothing else? Well, parrots everybody, Like I said,
go wat some parrot videos and uh. In the meantime,
it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call this plugging
(49:09):
another podcast. We don't often do this, and it's not
from professional envy or anything. It was just, uh, we
would be doing it all the time if we did
it too much. Yeah, nice one. Hey guys, my name
is vv goer g A you are. I've been listening
to your show for the past six years. My physiotherapist
(49:31):
working in the suburbs of Delhi, and part of my
job is provide domicillary care where I have uh to
go see my patients at their houses and therefore need
to drive every day. You're one of my favorite podcasts
to listen to, and I'll listen to you guys almost
every day when I am driving through the chaotic traffic.
It gave me some something worthwhile to listen to. It's
interesting and I like your humorous, humorous conversational style. I
(49:55):
wish after covid gets over, you would do a live
show in New Delhi someday. Man, how about that? Yeah,
maybe I think we could draw a crowd. I have
a crowd of one at least. Yeah, Vivik will be there.
I just want to know that someone is listening to
you guys every day from the other side of the globe,
and you inspired me to launch my own podcast. Uh
(50:16):
if you would flee shout out to Vivik Gower, physiotherapist,
podcast that is v I V E k g A.
You are a physiotherapist podcast. Although it's in English which
is Hindi and English, you guys will not understand the
majority of it L O L, but keep doing what
you're doing. Best Switches That is Vivik. Thanks a lot, Vavik,
(50:38):
and good luck on your podcast. That was very nice
of you to plug a chuck. Yeah, check it out
in English and we'll see you in New Delhi someday.
Don't know win, but someday sure. And if you want
to get in touch with this, like Vick did, you
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
(51:02):
of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio Cale and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Trills a Lot Bryant, and there's
Jerry Roland, who's bright plumage is sticking me in the
(00:25):
face right now. And this is that was a great part. Uh.
And this is Stuff you Should Know about parrots, which
is a surprisingly interesting topic. Chuck. Nice one, nice pick.
That's good. Just do that, dude, the whole time. We're
gonna we're gonna hammer out like a means of communication,
just with that sound throughout this episode. Okay, oh, man'd
(00:48):
be kind of great. You already broke character, Chuck, I
think to the relief of every single person listening to
So you were surprised, huh yeah, I mean, I know
parents are knee or whatever, but I and I knew
that they were probably one of the smartest animals, or
some of them are. Some are just you know, dumb
as door knobs, but there are plenty that are really smart.
(01:10):
They make up for the really dumb ones. Um. But
I just I know I didn't know that they were
quite this this neat and also one of my new
favorite things is like watching little happy birds run like
hop around and sing. And there's a lot of parrots
that do that. It's like one of their traits, Like
they're really cute. Uh kind of animal. I love it.
(01:34):
In your mid forties, you're turned onto the joy of
birds chirping and jumping around. I didn't say I was
turned on by it, turned onto it. Oh gosh, there's
a big difference between those two. Uh. Have you ever
had any experience with parrots or known bird people? Uh? No,
(01:55):
so tangentially I was um UM's grandma has or had
a parrot. She passed a year or so ago, but
her parrot is still alive. Um she had a couple,
Brutal and Brutus, and Brutal was fine, but Brutus terrorized
you me when she was growing up, I mean like
terrorized her. And they didn't see her for many years.
(02:16):
And when I was when I visited and met her
grandma and Brutus, Brutus like at first was just kind
of like oh hum. And then he you could tell
the moment he recognized Jumie and he lunged at her.
He was like, you, I remember you. After all those years,
he still just did not like umi for some reason. Yeah.
I mean, I've got some parrots and bird stuff that
(02:38):
I'll pepper throughout when it's applicable. But you know, bird folks,
I mean, if you're a bird person. My experience has
been bird people are just sometimes a little eccentric. Oh yeah.
Bird people are definitely a certain type, just like cat
people are a certain type and dog people are certain types.
But there's a lot of people and dog people sure. Yeah, yeah,
(02:58):
I think that's one of the things that makes bird
people seem eccentric is there's far fewer of them. But
you know, one of the things I didn't realize it
could be. That could be also like the extensive stacks
of paperback fantasy novels that just line their floors throughout
their house. That too. Yeah. But one of the things
that I didn't realize is that birds are the fourth
(03:20):
um fourth most popular pet in the United States, which
makes sense if you think about it, But I never
really thought about all mine. Mine just stops after dogs,
which are number one. Yeah, I mean dogs, cats, what
is it? Fish? And then birds. I would expect goats
to be somewhere on there, but I think people just
love seeing goats and not necessarily owning them. Yes, sure,
(03:44):
but I think a lot of people who own birds
come especially parrots, come to feel the same way after
they've bought a parrot, as we'll see. Yeah, so should
we dig into this thing I thought we already had.
So there are a lot of different kinds of parrots. Uh,
they are, I mean, they're close to four hundred species
(04:07):
of the order. And I'd look this up in a
couple of places. Uh, citize for mese. Mm hmm, what
did you get? Uh, yeah, I thought you were gonna
say Citi signs, but yeah, that's that's how I would
have said it, okay. Uh, And we're talking like you know,
if you think of a parrot, you probably think of like, oh,
it's a macaw or an African gray. But if you've
(04:30):
seen a parakeet or a lorikeet, or a cockatiel or cockatoo,
those are all parrots as well. Yeah, so I love
birds as well. There's there's a lot of different kinds
of birds that are parrots, and um, some of them
just don't even really look like it. You're like, no,
that's an eagle, or I think that's a kind of vulture.
Like they're very they're really varied um order um. But
(04:52):
they all have in common a couple of things that
will see, one of which is a short beak that's
curved usually uh, which is very very powerful. And then
they also have a certain kind of toe arrangement called
the zygodactyl toe arrangements talk more about in a little bit,
but other than that, they are really kind of very
like I was saying, in size and shape and color um,
(05:15):
and even down to some kinds of species. They can
be varied among the male and the female so much so.
I think there's one, Oh, I can't remember which one
it was, um, but it was a kind of parrot,
smallish parrot where the males and the females look so
totally different color wise that they were thought to be
different species for a very long time. That's right, that's
(05:36):
the Solomon Island electus. Thank you, show off, but thank you.
So you know, like you said, they vary in size.
There are some that are so big, like uh, the
Coca poa in New Zealand that can be like a
seven pounder. Did you see any videos of those guys?
They're great. They can't even fly there so big, No,
they don't. They don't even they bound along their wings.
(06:01):
They don't work for flying, but they use them for
stability because they mostly climb trees. But they're yeah, they're
ground dwelling. They look like little furry or feathery mammals
basically sort of. I don't know why that hasn't been
a Disney character yet. I don't either, because they also
seemed to be very sweet. I saw some uh New Zealand, um,
(06:22):
like I guess researchers who were tracking them, and I
don't even think they put this one Coca poa under
when they took a blood sample. It was just laying
in their lap and I think it was just like
just basically like yeah, just hanging out, you know, like
go ahead, just take the blood and let me let
me go again. So they're super super chill um. But yeah,
they would make a perfect Disney character for sure. Yeah.
(06:44):
So those are the big daddies. Um. There are ones
from New Guinea that are just a few inches, way
less than an ounce. I think the highest Innthe macaw
is generally the biggest just in size. Uh. They can
be three and a half feet long. Um, they can
have four with wingspans and I think the kind of
trademark characteristic when you think of parrots though, or the
(07:06):
vibrant colors. Um, you know, some are like the gray
African gray is mainly just gray that has a little
bit of red. But when you think of parrots, you
think of those really brightly colored blues and greens and
reds and little rosy cheeks and stuff like that. Yeah, which,
and I mean they're obviously the reason why parrots have
very bright colors is to attract mates. Like that's basically
(07:28):
the reason for anything to have a bright color, unless
it's showing that it's poisonous. And as far as we've
ever found, parrots are not poisonous. But one of the specialties,
do you think, right, dead by dawn? One of the
specialties of the pigments in parrots. It's apparently not found
(07:49):
in other birds. The chuck is that those pigments have
antibacterial properties, which I guess keep them from getting like
wing rot or something like that. Yeah, there's um, there's
so I think it's called citico boy, here we go.
Citico Fulvin's are those pigments, and they're found only in
(08:10):
parts There aren't even any other birds to have these. Yeah,
But I mean other birds have colors, but they don't
have that specific kind of anti bacterial agent color pigment, right,
that's right. And you mentioned the toes. That is a
um you know, along with I think like owls and woodpeckers,
and I think there are some other birds that hive
these zygodactyl feet. But that means they have the usual
(08:33):
four toes, but most birds have three in one arrangement,
like three up front, one in the back. In this case,
they have two upfront, two in the back. So Juliet
helped us put this together, and she basically points out
that like this means they have two sets of opposable thumbs.
So that's why they're really good climbers, and they can
hold on to a branch like it's you know, until
(08:55):
the sun comes up dead by down style exactly. And
if you've ever seen a parrot work a nut or
seed or something with the combination of the beak in
those four toes, it's pretty pretty dexterrous. Yeah. That's also
again how those coca posts can climb trees without any
ability to fly. They I mean, they can maneuver, they
(09:17):
can hang and believe there's an upside down hanging type
of parrot, which I'm not sure why it hangs upside down,
maybe just to show off that it has zygodactyl toes.
But they can do a lot with those things. And yeah,
in combination with their beak there, they're really working it.
Apparently their beak as well. Um, that sharp, short curved
(09:37):
beak that that all parrots have is extremely powerful. Um.
They move independently of one another lower beak in the
upper beak, so it can exert a lot of force. Um.
And and that really helps out because a lot of
their food are like really hard nuts and seeds and
things like that, but they they're nothing in the face
(09:58):
of a parrots beak. Yeah, it's if you've ever been
chopped down on by a parrot, it's rough. Yeah, they'll
take a chunk of skin out. Yeah, they were. When
I worked in Arizona, that restaurant in Yuma, Julianna's Patio Cafe.
It was an outdoor cafe and they had the owner, Julia,
(10:18):
had parrots and I think they were like five of them,
just kind of behind where you eat on these stands,
not even caged. And they were mean, the snakes, not
to her they were, but if you were not her
and you went up and you were like, oh, let
me give you a little ear scratch. One of those
things could just fly its little head around and chop
(10:41):
down on your finger and it feels like it's in
a vice. Yeah, well you're lucky. They could have taken
your finger clean off. Probably there's there's anecdotal stories that, um,
that we are not able to verify. But this, it's
definitely worth mentioning that a large parrot could snap a
broomstick with its beak, which is, if you read it,
(11:04):
it's really impressive. When you say it out loud, you
feel very foolish a little bit. I mean, sure, I
guess it depends on the broom but it's it's really old, rotted,
termite rotted broomstick. Yeah, let's just say it's really really
a lot of force. Um, and my finger can vouch
for that. Was that some of the peppering you alluded
(11:25):
to earlier, that's one one kind of pepper, one grain
of pepper. Got I had a bird that'll come up later.
I can't wait for that one. Um. So Chuckie, you're
saying that, like, um, they wouldn't bite Julia Julianna Julianna
Julia because she was part of their flock. As we'll
see um. And it turns out that there are some
(11:48):
parrots get along with other species of parrots and even
other species of birds and other kinds don't so much
so that when you read like a parrot owner's guide,
they're basically like, if you're gonna get you know, other
birds do not get this kind with this kind. And ironically,
love birds are famously mean to other species of birds.
(12:08):
But if you're in their flock, then you're you're one
of them. And that's one thing that one reason why
parrots make such great pets for so many people is
because they imprint with humans really well, and are you're
just a member of their family and they're a member
of your family. That's just the way it is to
the parrot. If you're an outsider interloper, yeah, they'll take
your finger off like it's an old broomstick. So Yumi
(12:31):
was never ingratiated herself, I I guess not, which just
surprising because everybody likes you, you know, I know, like
animals flocked to her like snow white. Basically, yeah, she's
always she's got this lamb following around. Now. I don't
know where that thing came from. It is cute, it
is the lambing is coming soon, unfortunately for the boy.
(12:51):
Uh well, let's take a little break there then and
we'll come back and talk a little bit about Uh,
parrots in the wild. Want to learn about astortic how
to take the perfect, but all about fractal get Kiscon's
hunt the Lizzie Border murders. That they kind of all
runs on the plane every day. We should know. Word up, Jerry. Okay,
(13:27):
So Chuck, we were talking. We're going to talk about
parrots in the wild UM, which is where they used
to be um more often than not, and still are.
Like there's something like three hundred and about three hundred
and sixty known species of parrots UM. But a lot
(13:47):
of them are dying off really quick, as we'll talk about.
But the thing about parrots were learning is that they're
really resilient, Like they can adapt and find homes and
make homes for themselves in new climates. So you'll find
them typically in their preferred area around the tropics, around
the equator, typically in the southern hemisphere, but you're also
(14:09):
going to find them like living up in mountain ranges,
high up on rocky outcrops. Um. You'll find them in
Chicago's Hyde Park. There's a bunch of Connecticut. They're kind
of all over the place. Even though no native species
UM from the United States are are still around, there's
still plenty of like wild feral parrots that live out
(14:29):
in the US. Yeah. When I was in Australia, UM,
we had a couple of down days and you know,
my buddy Scotty, our friend Scotty, came over to join us,
and um we Scotty and I went down to wine
country south of south of Melbourne, which is just some
of those beautiful land I've ever seen in my life.
(14:50):
And we were at a wine winery overlooking this huge
vineyard and then like the sort of woodland jungle, and
I saw these huge white birds flying around down there,
and we were the only people there. We were there
in the off season, so everywhere we went, we were
the only two people kind of tasting. And so we got,
you know, to hang out with the the winemakers, which
(15:11):
is cool, and they said, uh, there was a cockatoose
and I was like, I was just a naive American.
I didn't know they just flew around Australia like that.
And I said, just so you know those like they
sell those in stores for a lot of money in
the United States, And I said, it's just crazy to
me that they're just flying around. Yeah, apparently there was
(15:33):
a time not terribly long ago where you could see
beautiful green cockatoos um or parakeets i'm sorry, flying around
the United States until we drove them to extinction about
a hundred or so years ago. Yeah, the Carolina went
in there, a North Carolina parakeet, the Carolina parakeet. Yep.
It was just this gorgeous, green, beautiful parakeet that was
(15:56):
native to the United States. Um and I saw some things. So,
you know. Passenger pigeons were also famously um uh, driven
to extinction. The last Carolina parakeet died in the same
cage that the last passenger pigeon, Martha died in at
the Cincinnati Zoo. So the Cincinnati Zoo had the honor
of keeping captive the last passenger pigeon and the last
(16:19):
Carolina parakeet and killing them. Right, They had this one
zookeeper who was in charge of strangling the last one
just to give it over with because they couldn't couldn't
stand the tin in any longer. You know, They're like,
just get it over with. Oh, I've got a joke
that is, so I'm not going to tell because I
would upset bird lovers, So tell me later. I'll tell
you later. Uh So, these parents, they mainly stay up
(16:44):
in the trees. Obviously, they do come down if they
were going to drink something and sometimes if they need
to find something to eat if they can't get it
up there, And they generally do this kind of follow
the humans patterns of kind of hanging out and doing
the stuff during the day and sleeping at night unless
you're a coca peo or a night parrot, and they
are nocturnal, which is um. I think they're the only
(17:06):
two of the species. What's neat about those coca posts?
Who is um? They be from being nocturnal, the eyes
have migrated from the sides of their heads towards the
front of their face, and they've developed this kind of
puffy feathers around their eyes. So they're also known as
the owl parrot because they've started to kind of resemble
the owl, and the owl is typically nocturnal as well.
Are you going to get a Coca peo. I think
(17:27):
I might. Actually, there's only a hundred and fifty left me.
I could probably be arrested, but at the very least,
I'm going to give it a shot. You know. So
they are omnivores and they will generally eat seeds and
nuts and plants and fruits and things and insects. But
if they need to eat, you know, a parrot's gonna
do what a parent's gonna do. This is crazy, and
(17:48):
this is you know, this can cause problems. I think
the African gray can feast on corn, which has caused
problems with corn crops in New Zealand. This is the
crazy part. Uh. In the kind of mid eighteen hundreds
in New Zealand, keys k e a s We're discovered
to be and this is sort of horrifying. Eating sheep
(18:11):
and attacking sheep in the middle of the night. Yes, well,
I guess it was in the middle of the night
because they're not they're not nocturnal. But in my mind,
it's a horror movie and it happens in the middle
of the night to me the most, the like the
middle of the day makes things even more horrific. Things
aren't bad. Things aren't supposed to happen in the middle
of You're supposed to happen at night in the woods,
you know, good point, not not in the middle of
(18:33):
a field in the day. So seeing some parrots attack
and eat a sheep in the middle of the day,
that's bad news. But those things, actually they look a
lot like eagles more so than parrots to me. So
you give them a pass. Yeah, that's fine. What I'd
like to see. I'd like to see them all try
to carry off a sheep together with teamwork, you know,
(18:56):
But I don't think that's how it goes. Well, there's
your cartoon that's like a ziggy cartoon. I think they
I think they put parrot repellent on because you know,
they back in the day, they would just kill them
all and let God sort of ount. That's what happened
to the Carolina parrot key. Yeah exactly. But they, you know,
eventually they were like, we can't just kill these keys,
(19:19):
Like we're a more evolved you know, humankind at this point,
and we got to stop this stuff. We gotta protect them.
So they've looked for ways to to keep from having
to do that, and one of them is that parrot
repellent on the cheep's bellies, which it's probably like that
stuff you tried to use on your fingernails to keep
from biting them. I used to coat my fingers in that.
(19:41):
But you just slather in a sheep's belly and call
it a day. Yeah, it's very better. One thing I
did want to add though, when you were talking about
their range and they can end up in weird places.
I remember when we would do commercial shoots in Pasadena, California,
and we would have the Unlucky Parrot Location, which is
basically anywhere in Pasadena. On any given day, you could
(20:03):
be near a bunch of parrots making a ton of
noise and you can't shoot, You know how it is
with sounds like you can't you can't pay the guy
to turn off his blower or his lawnmower. Yeah, but
you can't. Yeah, I want two and free reign at
the craft services table. But yeah, those uh, those Pasadena parrots,
(20:26):
they have disrupted many film shoot so um. Yeah. So
you're like, well, wait a minute, there's not native parrots
in the United States. How are there a bunch of
parrots in the trees in Pasadena? Well, people let their
parents go, or people die in their parrots escape or
what have you. Um And like I was saying before,
it's like they're really resilient. And once they start forming
(20:48):
breeding pairs, even though they have like a really low
reproduction rate. Um as we'll see in a second, they
they can they can survive. They can make new niches
for themselves, which is pretty cool. But they're all there's
there's a lot in Florida, Texas, and California. I think
every kind of species that has a population is supported
(21:11):
in all three of those states. Right in the Connecticut
one is just a that's a very weird thing. Yeah.
In Chicago's Hyde Park too, it's like the roof caves
in on people's houses in the winter in Chicago. There's
so much snow and it's so cold, Like, how are
parrots surviving? But apparently they do. It's crazy, so they
(21:33):
live And this is this is pretty great. This is
where stuff you should know things intersect or love of uh,
collections and groupings of animals, sounds of assemblage. Yeah, pandemonium
of parrots is what it's called. For good reason, like
I said, because they are super noisy and can be
aggravating in large numbers. When they're out in the wild
and they live together, they help each other out, they
(21:56):
feed with each other, they look out for each other,
they keep track of each other, and they communicate with
each other. All those squawks and screams that you hear
when a bunch of when a pandemonium is gathered, is
them talking to each other. And they might be saying,
you know, film crew, or they might be saying snake
or monkey like look out. Yeah. I also have the impression,
(22:18):
from spending hours and hours of watching beautiful parrots of
all types seeing and be happy um that that they're
just basically sharing how they're feeling at any given points
sometimes too, and that a lot of times it's real positive.
You know, they're talking about how great things are beautiful
the day is. I could be anthropomorphizing, but it really
(22:39):
really seems that way. They just seem like kind of
a happy, happy type of animal. I'm like, I want
to buy into that too. I'm with you. Just go ahead.
It's like, prove me wrong. I'll give you ten years,
and in those in the ten year span, I'll enjoy
these parrots for what I think they're doing. I agree.
I mean, we all laughed at you early on, and
(23:00):
now she's got that lamb following her around, right like
miracles can happen. We have to get some of that
um that nail biting stuff to slather on the lamb's
belly in case it runs into some keys. Uh. So
they mate and they have little babies. They are generally monogamous,
and males and females work together to raise the kid
(23:23):
and to care for the little baby. From the moment
that it's an egg, they will sit on it for
eighteen to thirty days and even take turns. I think
the mom usually does most of the sitting while the
male goes out and get some food. But the male
can also be like, why don't you why don't you
stretch your leg, you stretch your toes? Yeah exactly, so
(23:45):
um yeah, But for the most part, the male gets
the food or something like that. But the um lovebirds
also are like famously monogamous, and they so much so
that when they're separated, when a breeding pair of separated,
when they're brought back together, um all, first of all,
they'll start to like lose energy and get real depressed
and sad. And then when they're brought back together. They
(24:06):
reform their bond by feeding one another with their beak.
It's very cute, isn't That's sweet? Um? Yeah, I kind
of have have a thing for love birds now. They're
just super cute and pretty and so you know what,
you know, what birds are not monogamous, which one's casual
sex birds raw lowbirds. Yeah, but good for them, you know.
(24:28):
So sure they're just out there doing their thing, not
hurting anybody, as long as they're upfront about what they're
in there for. You know, Rob Blow, is this from
his sex scandal from like years ago. No, I just
think of Rob Blow is like being difficult to pin
down and you know, love and life, having having a
good time, just doing his thing. That's what I think.
(24:49):
He's really worked to change that image over the past
three decades. He really has not with me, but I
recognize what he's been trying to do. Okay, famous lothario
Rob Blow. Oh well, I also dated myself because I
would say a good third of our listeners are like,
who's this Rob Low guy. It's like, oh yeah, that's right,
he was, so they might know them. I was gonna say,
(25:12):
it's like Mad magazine making fun of Spiro Agnew when
we were little, and we're like, who who is the
Spiro Agnew? Right? To us, Rob Low is the sax
player from st Almost Fire who made a sex tape
to them. He's the happy dad and uh Parks and
wreck guy. I also think of him as literally dude
(25:32):
from um west Wing. I don't remember what his character's
name was, No need to email, I can look it
up myself. I never saw that show. Oh you didn't.
It's good. I think you'd like it, all right. Even
if you don't like Aaron Sorkin, you'd like west Wing.
He's a little wordy for me, Yeah, sure, yeah, a little,
(25:52):
a little over the top every single second of every
single show. But west Wing was his. It was. It
just worked perfectly for him. Yeah. I don't want to
knock Aaron Sorkin. I'll just say he has a fondness
for typing. But so there was this one, this one,
this one Rob Low sketch on Sara Live. I know
we've talked about before, but remember when Aaron Sorkin was
(26:13):
busted with mushrooms in the airport. No, so this that
news came out on a week when Roblow was hosting
Sara Live. So they did one of those famous like
walk and talk shots from West Wing and in the background,
suddenly suddenly it converts from like the West Wing that
they're walking through and now they're being chased in a
black and white movie by a giant like iguana. And
(26:35):
so they they're still walking talking about, you know, the
administration of the president, but they're also kind of jogging
running away looking behind them at this giant iguana has
really really great stuff. So how many breaks have we taken? Charles?
Just one? Do you want to take another one? Or
keep going a little more? I think maybe let's wait
(26:56):
one minute. Let's talk about their uh intelligent and altruism,
and I think that's those are two lovely topics. Well,
before we do that, I've got one more thing about mating.
So um they actually when they reproduce, they'll they'll lay
between like two and eight eggs at a time, and
their incubation period can be really fast, like eighteen days
thirty days. But they also usually only have a couple
(27:19):
of um chicks survive, and they spend a lot of
time and energy raising their young almost to a humanlike degree,
not not for eighteen years, but for up to like
four years. In some cases, the offspring, the chicks will
you know, grow up with the parents. Um, so they
actually have a very low reproductive rate. So it's a
big problem when humans come along and you know, kill
(27:42):
off pair of populations because they're slow to recover. They're
slow to reproduce. So just put that that little pin
in your hat and smoke it. I just can't get
that one right these days. So parents are super smart,
like we talked about. And there are a couple of
really great examples of how and how they display this.
And one is is they can use tools like they
(28:05):
have seen parrots use sticks to like scratch their heads
and stuff like that. Uh, this one is amazing. They
found that cockatoos have been observed using sticks to drum
on logs as part of a courtship sort of mating ritual.
Because nothing women love more than a drum solo. You know,
I know it really just every woman alive thinks of
(28:28):
drum solo is the greatest musical thing you can do.
That's usually when I go to the bathroom to Yeah,
I mean it's a hats off, but yeah, it's just
kind of whatever that don't happen much anymore. No, you
don't see those, but um, the one that knocked my
socks off, chuck was Um, there's at least oh the
greater vassa parrot. They will use little pebbles or whatever
(28:53):
to grind up seashells, and the male does this, and
the male will eat the seashell and re urgitated into
like this vomity calcium rich paste as an offering to
pair of female he's trying to make with, which sounds
gross and weird until you realize that other birds eat
calcium rich shells or chew on them or whatever to
(29:15):
to strengthen the shells of their own eggs. But parrots
are the only known birds to actually use tools to
grind the shells up to make them easier to digest.
And the males offering it to the woman is a
like a basically like, hey, look at how well I'm
taking care of you and our kid. I'm regurgitating seashells
for you that I'm grinding up. That's astounding tool used.
(29:39):
Like you just do not see that elsewhere except in
like maybe primates here there. Well, I mean, if you
want to talk about cool, their altruism is something that
you don't see much in the animal kingdom at all.
Um very few non human species show this trait, and
no birds before just a couple of years ago. We're
even on this list. They even tested crows out because
(30:00):
they're super smart, I think in and they gave them
an altruism tests and they're like, nope, you guys failed
the test. But they did this. And this was from
just January of last year in current biology, ironically, like
just a couple of months before the coronavirus hid. They're like,
they don't have anything to talk about this month exactly,
(30:23):
they're doing some important work. And they did this um
exercise where they got these birds together, these parrots, and
that they put them in pairs and they basically put
a wall between them with a hole, and they were separated,
and one of them had a token and one of
them had that you would trade for food, but one
(30:44):
of them didn't. One of them had the food and
one of them had the token. So these birds literally
figured out how to work together to exchange like here,
you take this token because you've got the food, feed yourself.
But remember me, if the roles are ever reversed, right,
which is a totally different thing. It's a reciprocity. So
these these mccaus showed that there was it. The African
(31:06):
gray is the one that passed. Yeah, and they're typically
known as like possibly the smartest birds of all time.
But um, the like in addition to like, here you go,
have this, have the like, take this token and get
yourself some food even though I'm not getting anything back.
When the when the roles were reversed, the birds would
do the same thing, so they would get their turn
(31:27):
basically later on. And so yeah, you have altruism and
reciprocity tool use. Um. They're also very famous for mimicry too,
which a lot of birds can mimic sounds. I saw
a video of a minor bird um in the wild,
I guess being filmed with a camera as well as
a video camera, because it made an exact sound of
(31:48):
a digital camera taking a picture. It was astounding. It
sounded like they dubbed the sound of a camera over
this bird. I wonder about that on some of these videos.
This is I mean, I hope, but it was legit.
I mean it was. It looked like a legit wildlife
video or a clip from one. But a lot of
birds can do that. But the thing is other birds
(32:08):
can't do. What parrots can do is like their mimicry
is at a whole different level compared to other birds.
And they're basically the only bird we know of that
can mimic a human voice. I think that's a great
place for a cliffhanger, right, sure, all right, we'll come
back and we'll talk more about mimicry right after this.
I want to learn about a terrestortic college act how
(32:29):
to take the bird. But but all about fractals getting
Kiscon's hunt, the Lizzie Border murders, that they kind of
all runs on the plane every day. We should know.
Word up, Jerry. All right, so we're back and we're
(32:56):
talking about birds vocalizing and mimicking things. Uh, they have
voices that vary by region, which is really neat. They
have different dialects basically, and if a parent moves to
a new area where they have a different kind of dialect,
they will adjust, you know what Julia refers to as
their accents to fit in, which is really really amazing. Yeah,
(33:18):
it is amazing and apparent. I was reading up on
a study about that chuck and they found that a
bird that lives, like, these dialects will be kind of regional,
but some regions butt up against one another. So if
you're in a nest that um is adjacent to two regions,
they'll kind of use it. They'll go back and forth.
And they found like the differences in the basic structure
of the calls are different enough that that they're dialectical.
(33:41):
But then within these nests there's different variations, slighter variations
within the dialects, so like they're they're communicating into some
really astounding degrees. And like I was saying that, you know,
parrots in particular the only one smart enough to mimic humans.
And one of the reason is that they do this
is they're able to manipulate their tongue, which is one
(34:03):
of the things that we do to produce speech. So
they're not just they're not just mimicking a sound like,
they're actually forming words very similarly to how humans do. UM.
They are also capable of hitting like pitches, lower pitches
that are more in step with how human the human
voice sounds, so it sounds more like human that they're mimicking.
(34:26):
But then also they seem to have an additional layer
um in their brain and the region of their brain
that they used to to mimic um that other animals
don't have that other birds don't have, which implies that
they're just smart enough to do this too. Yeah. So
I had a cockateal. Oh some pepper. Everybody had a
(34:48):
cockateal when I was a kid. I was like, I mean,
I feel like we had this bird for a few years,
but I was definitely in the you know, ten eleven
twelve year old range, and our little gray cockateal was
named Dolly, and I, you know, knew that you could
teach cockatiels to say things. So I was, my brother
and I were all over this. You know, no one
else in the family really cared. But we got a
(35:10):
record to teach us how to do this. And it
involves tons and tons of repetition. You can't just go
up to a bird and teach it to say something
a couple of times and they'll do It. Requires a
lot of repetition, and so we taught. By the end,
Dolly could say hello and hello Dolly, and Dolly could
do the wolf whistle like uh oh yeah, like when
(35:31):
someone walked in the room, uh I. Dolly learned to
do the charge in it. And and then the one
I was most proud of is I taught Dolly to
do the co co co co like a jungle bird.
And it was my favorite thing that Dolly could do.
So Dolly would sit on my shoulder and like kind
(35:53):
of nibble up my ear lobes and watch TV and
stuff and peck at my hair and that was sort
of the ex tent of it. It was a tremendous mess.
Uh And you know, we're I guess we can go
and talk about that. If you have a a bird,
it's it's feathers and poop and seeds everywhere. Yeah. Well,
because when you have a parrot, you're supposed to give
(36:15):
it a lot of time outside of the cage, which
we'll we'll talk a little more extensively about that. But yes,
they're a big mass for sure. But Dolly learning to
talk was one of the coolest things I did as
a kid. And people love to hear parrots say things.
They if you go and type parrot into YouTube. The
third thing that comes down is the next offering is
(36:38):
parrots cursing, because it's just funny. People want to see
a parrot tell someone to you know, buzz off. Yeah,
buzz off if you're lucky, if they haven't lived in
a frat house for a few years. Um, more often
than not, they just straight up curse. And every once
in a while you'll see a story about some parrots
that had to be moved from like a wild I've
(37:00):
preserved because they were cursing at like the people who
came by to see them or whatever, and teaching little
kids bad manners. I mean, they're all kinds of videos.
It's it's very fun. Kids. Ask your parents if you
can watch parrot talking videos, because some of them curse.
Uh if there are some funny ones too with parrots
and alexis um talking to Alexa, and I think one
(37:24):
of them that was a parrot that the lady um,
the owner went back and ordered or was checking on
things that were ordered, because this parrot would order stuff. Yeah,
and the parrot kept trying to order a fart shopping
I don't know. I mean she just said what's on
the shopping list? And Alexa said, bird seed fart, Right,
(37:46):
that's pretty great. I want to know what Alexa would
would imagine that to be well, I mean, if I
think if you say to burp or fart they'll do it, right.
I don't know. I haven't tried that, but I'm going
to write after this, do you really haven't. I haven't
very impressed. I'm forty four years old and I've never
tried that. Al Right, well I'm almost fifty, so you'll
(38:06):
come back around and think it's funny again. You know
what's funny, Chuck? You have mastered one of the I
think sixty things that the Kama Sutra says every person
should master before they die, and that is to train
a parrot to talk is one of them. Yeah, I
had no idea I ran across that. So, um, we
can't talk about parents, and especially talk about parent intelligence
(38:30):
and not talk about Alex the parrot, which who we
have talked about before he showed up in our How
Zero Works episode, because he's, as far as anyone knows,
the I think, if not the only bird, possibly the
only other non human animal who's demonstrated a grasp of
(38:52):
the concept of zero. Um, that's a really weird concept
that that most non humans can't grasp, or possibly any
other non humans can't grasp, Alex could, which kind of
goes to show you what a smart part he was. Yeah,
I think they figured in the end, Alex was about
as smart as a five year old person, and uh
(39:13):
not from like the depth of vocabulary. Alex knew about
a hundred words, which is sounds like a lot compared
to Dolly. But I think the Guinness record is a
parakeet named Puck who learned about sevent dred words and change,
so a hundred is good. But Alex could understand concepts
like bigger and smaller and same and different, and would
(39:35):
make up his own word combinations, like I think the
first time Alex a cake, Alex called it yummy bread,
which is really pretty astounding and can maybe kind of scary.
He supposedly is the first animal to ask an existential question,
which he saw himself in the mirror, and he asked
(39:56):
what color? And so his his handler and researcher I
Irene Pepperberg, who wrote many, many papers from the seventies
to the early two thousands. UM about Alex, whose name
it turns out as an acronym for Avian language experiment.
It's a little saddened by that, you know, like the
robot whose name is like an acronym for someone science
(40:17):
E just kind of dehumanizing. UM. But Alex. Um, he
he asked like what color, and they took it to
mean like he was asking about himself, like he he
recognized himself in the mirror. And apparently parrots frequently talk
about themselves in third person, like that that parrot or
that para. Keep Puck hell right right, who held the
(40:44):
record for the most words, Um, he talked about himself
in third person. And apparently he once said it's Christmas
and that he was happy about it being Christmas, and
Puck loved everybody. That's great, Yeah, but I mean it's like,
that's pretty intelligent. If this parrot understands what that it's
Christmas day and everybody's happy that he loves everybody, it's
(41:07):
a I'm I'm just impressed with parrots. In addition to
being cute, they also have brains, brains and looks. That's right,
So I think we gotta at least talk about the
notion of pirates having parrots. Uh. It is not necessarily
just a movie trope or a book trope from literature.
It makes sense in a way. Um, they may have
(41:29):
wanted when they're out at sea some companionship having a
dog or a cat or a goat, or a lamb
following you around on a ship isn't a great idea?
Like a bird kind of makes sense. And they could
eat the hard attack and the crackers and and sip
on the rum, and it makes sense to have birds.
They were they were they were going places where they
(41:52):
might have been. Like I don't know if there's any
hard evidence, but nothing about it seems like there's no
way that could have been true. No, what what I
saw is that, um, that that's possibly the case, but
that the Age of Discovery was at the second time
that Europe fell in love with parrots as pets, and
that the initial trend started when Alexander the Great invaded
(42:14):
India and took some parrots back to Greece with them,
and they ended up spreading to Europe. And actually the
Alexandrine parrot is named after Alexander the Great because it's
apparently one of the ones that he brought back with them.
And then parents just I guess fell out of fashion.
And uh, then when people started going to like Brazil,
and and coming back from Brazil, they came back with
(42:34):
parrots on their shoulders and the trend started again. I
love it. I did mention that they were. They're not
the easiest pet to take care of, the air messy.
They are demanding, they're pretty needy. They need lots of attention.
If they don't get it, they can be kind of
disruptive and destructive. Uh, not trying to talk anyone out
of getting a bird, but it's a lot too lots
(42:56):
to bite off if you've never had one. Yeah, no,
it's I mean, like even even more of a commitment.
I would think then, say, like getting a dog, not
just because of the enormous amounts of attention that they
need from you, but they're really long lived too, Like
that's the deal. Much longer lived than than a dog
or a cat. Like like in in the wild, parrots
(43:17):
typically lived maybe thirty years. I think the the Cuca
po cuca po um lives possibly ninety years in the wild.
But in captivity parrots really live for a long time.
Um forty fifty sixty years. There was a major Mitchell's
cockatoon named Cookie. That's the oldest living documented parrot in captivity. Uh.
(43:40):
He lived to eighty three. I think, yeah, like you,
you often see parrots and people's wills because you have
to pass them along to somebody and yeah, for the
life of me Ida. I don't know what happened to Dolly.
We had Dolly for a few years. It's just kind
of one of those things when you're a kids sometimes
you have pets that just go away and your parents
are like, they're on the farm now, They're like Dolly,
(44:01):
who stop asking questions. Let's never speak of Dolly again.
Dolly may have gotten out, I don't know, but that happens.
I mean, they they escape sometimes. Um. I mean, Umey's
grandma's parent outlived her and they went to live with
one of her friends who keeps birds. So yeah, I mean,
like they're really long lived pets. But part of the
(44:24):
reason why they think that there are or why they
know there are feral parrot populations around the United States
is because people people just let them go. They're like,
I can't I had no idea what I was getting into.
Just fly free parrot. I'm sorry that we ever met.
It's like flushing that baby python down the toilet a
(44:44):
little bit, a lot bit actually, um. But the thing
is is it's kind of so it's it's good on
the one hand that that just doesn't automatically like kill
the parrot that they can Actually they might find like
a local population that they can join. They might find
another one and star to local population as a breeding pair. Um,
it's not like a death sentence to parrots, like you
(45:05):
should never you know, just release your pet into the wild.
That's that's just bad juju. But um, if you do
with the parrot, it's not It's not a death sentence,
is what I'm saying. One of the bigger problems of
that is that you have still placed to demand on
the bird market. Yes, and the bird market is not
(45:26):
like there's not some nice family in you know, the
central rural part of your state that breeds parrots, and
that's where all the parrots come from. The parrots that
you get typically have been stolen from a nest in
Brazil and brought to the United States. I saw something
like eight hundred thousand parrot chicks a year are removed
(45:47):
from nests to feed the demand of the exotic bird market. Um,
and a lot of them don't survive. They die on
the way. And as I was saying before, the reproductive
rate of parrots is low enough that once you get
enough chicks removed from their native habitats, they're not getting
replaced fast enough, and then that leads to a collapse
(46:08):
of the population and it can mean extinction if that
happens across the large enough range. Yeah, and there are
plenty of countries, including the United States, that have done
past legislation to try and put a dent in like
this importing and poaching and stuff. But at the beginning
of this year, there was a study in Global Change
Biology that said that a third apparent species are threatened
(46:30):
with extinction. I think a hundred and seventy one of
the species are near threatened or critically endangered. The cacapa
that you talked about, you mentioned that they're along like
a hundred and fifty of those left. Yeah, you really
don't want the cacapa to go extinct. Luckily, they're new
in New Zealand and New Zealand loves nature, so they're
in a good spot. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.
(46:53):
Are they trying to breed them? At least? I think
they're protecting the heck out of them and they're just
leaving them to breed amongst themselves. They live on three
isolated remote islands that don't have any introduced predators, so
they they're they're they're in a precarious place, but they're
in about as good a place as they could be
for the precarious state there in. Yeah, and it's you know,
it's not just people poaching. It's uh, humans encroaching with
(47:17):
developments and you know, less and less natural habitat. It's obviously, uh,
you know, the repercussions of climate change. When things like
the Australian wildfires break out, it's a reduction of habitat
and the poaching that's kind of put a real dent
in the para population. Yeah, so they're saying, well, you know,
there's there's so they've actually identified some hot spots of
parent biodiversity around the world that said like, Okay, if
(47:40):
these places, if the governments in these places like move
to protect parrots, parrots are going to be okay. Um,
So like the northeastern Andes, the Atlantic forest that stretches
from Brazil Inland and Argentina and Paraguay. Um, if these
places can can protect the parrots, their parents should be fine.
So hopefully they will. And then the demand side, uh,
(48:03):
if Europe in Japan will kind of get over their
love of parrots or figure out a different way to
get parrots a more sustainable way than that would have
a big effect to Are they two of the biggest
defenders from what I saw, Yeah, because that act the
US pass cut poaching and half um from what I
could tell, So it was like a really big had
(48:23):
a big impact. But Europe in japan'ss continued on without
that kind of legislation. I think it's great, well, not
great for them, but great for us. Up with parrots, everybody,
And if you want to get a little pop of
joy out of your day, watch this one minute video
called bird Sings in Synchrony with piano. Incredible cute, three
(48:44):
exclamation points not incredibly cute. It is one of the
sweetest things I've seen in a while. And you'll be like, yep,
Josh's right. Birds can just be happy little souls. Yeah,
or bird's cursing that's one too. Uh. Are you got
anything else that? Nothing else? Well, parrots everybody, Like I said,
go wat some parrot videos and uh. In the meantime,
it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call this plugging
(49:09):
another podcast. We don't often do this, and it's not
from professional envy or anything. It was just, uh, we
would be doing it all the time if we did
it too much. Yeah, nice one. Hey guys, my name
is vv goer g A you are. I've been listening
to your show for the past six years. My physiotherapist
(49:31):
working in the suburbs of Delhi, and part of my
job is provide domicillary care where I have uh to
go see my patients at their houses and therefore need
to drive every day. You're one of my favorite podcasts
to listen to, and I'll listen to you guys almost
every day when I am driving through the chaotic traffic.
It gave me some something worthwhile to listen to. It's
interesting and I like your humorous, humorous conversational style. I
(49:55):
wish after covid gets over, you would do a live
show in New Delhi someday. Man, how about that? Yeah,
maybe I think we could draw a crowd. I have
a crowd of one at least. Yeah, Vivik will be there.
I just want to know that someone is listening to
you guys every day from the other side of the globe,
and you inspired me to launch my own podcast. Uh
(50:16):
if you would flee shout out to Vivik Gower, physiotherapist,
podcast that is v I V E k g A.
You are a physiotherapist podcast. Although it's in English which
is Hindi and English, you guys will not understand the
majority of it L O L, but keep doing what
you're doing. Best Switches That is Vivik. Thanks a lot, Vavik,
(50:38):
and good luck on your podcast. That was very nice
of you to plug a chuck. Yeah, check it out
in English and we'll see you in New Delhi someday.
Don't know win, but someday sure. And if you want
to get in touch with this, like Vick did, you
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
(51:02):
of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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