For centuries, man has loved the birds like parrot and myna. Both these birds can be taught to imitate the human voice. There are many species of parrots and mynas which, if properly taught, can clearly speak many words and smaller sentences like human beings. Do you know how they can do it?
The parrot has a long and thick tongue. And so some people believe that because of this fact it can speak like human beings. But this is not the fact. We know that hawk and eagle also have long and thick tongues but they cannot imitate human voice. On the contrary, myna, without having such tongue is able to speak like us.
In fact, parrot and myna are more intelligent than other birds and thus can imitate the human voice. Their speech and hearing mechanism are slow. As a result, the sounds coming out of their mouth resemble that of human beings. It is interesting to note that parrot and myna themselves do not understand what they speak. They are able to imitate human voice by noticing our lip movements. A female parrot named ‘Prudle’, now in the care of Iris Frost of East Sussex, won the ‘Best talking parrot-like bird’ title of the National Cage and Advisory bird show in London for 12 consecutive years (1965-76). This bird from Uganda was captured in 1958 from a nest. It knows a vocabulary of nearly 800 words.
There are about 320 species of the parrots. Most of them are green. Their beaks are sharply pointed. Their length varies from 15 cms to 90 cms. Macaw, a long tailed parrot found in South America, is 90 cms long. They can live upto the age of 50 years if proper care is taken of. The females of all species of parrots lay white eggs. Parrot is a carrier of the virus causing disease called psittacosis.
