Home-raised African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus erithacus) exhibit strong social bonding with their human companions. We examined how 1 parrot's vocal production (speech and nonword sounds) changed with social context with respect to descriptive measures of the vocalizations and their thematic content. We videotaped the parrot in 4 social conditions: subject home alone, subject and owner ...

Our ability to make logical inferences is considered as one of the cornerstones of human intelligence, fuelling investigations of reasoning abilities in non-human animals. Yet, the evidence to date is equivocal, with apes as the prime candidates to possess these skills. For instance, in a two-choice task, apes can identify the location of hidden food if it is indicated by a rattling noise cause...

ß & R. I-I. BELTERMAN. 1980. The somatic chromosomes of three parrots: the Kea (Nestor notabilis), the Yellow-headed Parrot (Amazona ochrocephala) and the Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus). Acta Zool. Pathol. Antverpiensia 75: 9-18. JENSEN, R. A. C. 1975. Application of a simple chromosome technique in field studies. Emu 74 (Suppl.): 321. Lv, M. R. 1969. A widely applicable technique for direct...

Aimée Morgana noticed that her language-using African Grey parrot, N’kisi, often seemed to respond to her thoughts and intentions in a seemingly telepathic manner. We set up a series of trials to test whether this apparent telepathic ability would be expressed in formal tests in which Aimée and the parrot were in different rooms, on different floors, under conditions in which the parrot could r...

BACKGROUND The increasing popularity gained by pet birds over recent decades has highlighted the role of avian medicine and surgery in the global veterinary scenario; such a need for speciality avian medical practice reflects the rising expectation for high-standard diagnostic imaging procedures. The aim of this study is to provide an atlas of matched anatomical cross-sections and contrast-enha...

In primates, complex object combinations during play are often regarded as precursors of functional behavior. Here we investigate combinatory behaviors during unrewarded object manipulation in seven parrot species, including kea, African grey parrots and Goffin cockatoos, three species previously used as model species for technical problem solving. We further examine a habitually tool using spe...