Budgie intelligence

[vaneramos]

I stumbled across this interesting web site today:

Victor the Budgerigar: A Journey Into the Mind of a Parrot

Currently most of the scientific community has not recognized that parrots are capable of higher order thinking such as conversational language or concept formation. This site provides audio and video proof that they can. My goal is to lobby the scientific community so they do not ignore this case study and accept it as an important breakthrough in the animal intelligence field.

The main focus of this study is on a budgie named Victor who had a vocabulary of more than 800 words and thousands of phrases. This site shows how he pronounced these words and understood their meanings as well. You can hear him conversing on many different topics. Recently other budgies have began to talk in similar context as well. You can hear some of their recordings on this site too. We believe the recordings here are some of the most important examples showing higher animal intelligence ever provided.

~site owner and budgie speech trainer Ryan Reynolds

Listening to the recordings requires some patience, but it is worth the effort. This bird knew what he was saying.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the site. Too bad.

I think humans understand dog intelligence better because we are both highly social animals, so more of our brain capacity is involved in social interaction. Because cedar waxwings are a gregarious species, too, the one we raised seemed very "tuned in" and sensitive. But I don't think he related to human speech at all; he seemed to pick up other cues.