How Does a Parrot Talk?

Step 1 of 5

The sound starts much lower down.

You make sound at the top of your windpipe. A bird makes it at the bottom, where the pipe splits into the two lungs, in an organ called the syrinx.

Step 2 of 5

It has two of them, effectively.

The syrinx sits at a fork, and each branch can be controlled separately, so some birds sing two notes at once. It is a duet with itself, which no human throat can do.

Step 3 of 5

The tongue does the shaping.

Speech sounds are mostly made by changing the shape of the space the sound passes through. A parrot has an unusually thick, mobile tongue and moves it to do what your lips and tongue do together.

Step 4 of 5

It is copying, not understanding.

Parrots are natural mimics because their flocks use learnt calls to recognise each other. Copying a human is that same machinery aimed at the wrong flock.

Step 5 of 5

Some of it goes further than mimicry.

A few well-studied parrots have learnt to use words for real: naming colours, asking for particular things, and answering questions about objects they had not seen before.

Parrot flocks have local accents. Birds from different valleys use recognisably different versions of the same call.