🦜

How does a budgie learn 100 words and "talk"?

Imagine a little green bird sitting on your shoulder and suddenly saying, "Hello, how are you?" Does that sound like a miracle? In fact, it's a common budgerigar - the most talkative bird on Earth.

A budgie can remember up to 100 words, and a record holder named Pak entered the Guinness Book of Records with 1,728 words! That's more than a three-year-old child knows.

But here's an important secret: a parrot doesn't "speak" like you do. It doesn't understand the meaning of words like we do. It's just a great copycat. There's a special organ in its throat called the syrinx. People have a larynx, and birds have a syrinx. And it's what gives birds the ability to make sounds that we can never replicate: a creaking door, a ringing telephone, and a mother's voice.

Why do parrots learn our words at all? In the wild, they live in huge flocks - a hundred, a thousand birds together. In order not to get lost, each parrot has its own special squeak-"name". Other parrots learn this name and call each other. When a parrot lives in your home, its "flock" is your family. And it learns your voices to be its own.

If you have a budgie, talk to it every day. Repeat one word many times, gently, with a smile. In a week or two, you will hear your little friend whispering its first word from its perch in your own voice.

This means one thing: the parrot has accepted you into its flock.