Parrots in captivity are known for their ability to vocally imitate humans and recently it has been shown that wild-living orange-fronted conures are able to immediately imitate other individuals' contact calls. The function of this exceptional ability to imitate remains unclear. However, orange-fronted conures live in fission-fusion flocks where they encounter many different individuals every ...

Illegal trade threatens the survival of many wild species, and molecular forensics can shed light on various questions raised during the investigation of cases of illegal trade. Among these questions is the identity of the species involved. Here we report a case of a man who was caught in a Brazilian airport trying to travel with 58 avian eggs. He claimed they were quail eggs, but authorities s...

Comparative psychologists interested in the evolution of intelligence have focused their attention on social primates, whereas birds tend to be used as models of associative learning. However, corvids and parrots, which have forebrains relatively the same size as apes, live in complex social groups and have a long developmental period before becoming independent, have demonstrated ape-like inte...

In animal eyes of the camera type longitudinal chromatic aberration causes defocus that is particularly severe in species with short depth of focus. In a variety of vertebrates, multifocal optical systems compensate for longitudinal chromatic aberration by concentric zones of different refractive powers. Since a constricting circular pupil blocks peripheral zones, eyes with multifocal optical s...

The family Syringophilidae (Acari: Prostigmata) includes obligatory ectoparasites, which occupy feather quills from various parts of avian plumage, where they feed and reproduce. Our study was concerned with the global fauna syringophilid mites associated Psittaciformes, as well host-parasite specificity evolution. We assumed that system composed quill parrots represents a model group can be us...