African grey parrots spontaneously 'lend a wing'

Date:  January 9, 2020

Source: Cell Press

People and other great apes are known for their willingness to help others in need, even strangers. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on January 9 have shown for the first time that some birds -- and specifically African grey parrots -- are similarly helpful.

"We found that African grey parrots voluntarily and spontaneously help familiar parrots to achieve a goal, without obvious immediate benefit to themselves," says study co-author Désirée Brucks of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany.

Parrots and crows are known for having large brains relative to the size of their bodies and problem-solving skills to match. For that reason, they are sometimes considered to be "feathered apes," explain Brucks and study co-author Auguste von Bayern.

However, earlier studies showed that, despite their impressive social intelligence, crows don't help other crows. In their new study, Brucks and von Bayern wondered: what about parrots?

To find out, they enlisted several African grey parrots and blue-headed macaws. Both parrot species were eager to trade tokens with an experimenter for a nut treat. But, their findings show, only the African grey parrots were willing to transfer a token to a neighbor parrot, allowing the other individual to earn a nut reward.

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Parrot manages to fool Amazon's Alexa and orders his own gift box without his owners knowing

African Grey Parrot Buddy mimicked his owner's voice to place the order on the internet shopping website

BY COURTNEY GREATREXMEGAN WHITE

17:28, 20 SEP 2017

A family has been left stunned when their "attention-seeking" parrot managed to order its own internet shopping after tricking Amazon's Alexa.

Corienne Pretorius was baffled after a £10 order for gift boxes arrived at her house.

The bemused mum-of-one questioned husband Jan, 45, a civil engineer, and son Jaden, eight, but quickly realised the culprit was Buddy - their African Grey Parrot.

Corienne, from Greenwich, south east London, says the cheeky bird mimics her voice, and must have activated the device's voice recognition software to place the strange order.

She said: "I couldn't believe it when I realised that it was Buddy who had used Alexa to make an Amazon order.

"None of us even knew how to use her for that.

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CITES round-up: the world speaks up for the African Grey

By Alex Dale, 5 Oct 2016 

From 24 September to 5 October 2016, government representatives from around the world descended upon Johannesburg, South Africa, for a vital wildlife conference that will help secure the future of hundreds of species threatened by the demands of international trade.

The 17th Conference of the Parties (CoP17) was the latest meeting between the 183 countries (or ‘Parties’) across the globe that are voluntarily bound by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). CITES is an international agreement between governments that aims to ensure that the international trade of plants and animals, for any use, won’t endanger the long-term survival of the species. BirdLife International recognises the important role CITES plays in combatting the threat posed by the wild bird trade and our Partners around the world lobby for better domestic protection of birds and implementation of CITES. You can read more about the work BirdLife does with CITES here.

CoP17 was the first such meeting since 2013, and it was described as a ‘make or break’ conference for several globally threatened species in need of greater protection. Below are some of the headlines from the summit.

Read on

The grey parrot and the race against Africa’s wildlife extinction

The number of African greys has plunged to 1% of past levels, conservationists warn. But it is just one of a host of animals and plants on the continent whose future will be debated by more than 180 nations in Johannesburg this week

John Vidal

Saturday 24 September 2016 21.44 BST Last modified on Saturday 24 September 2016 22.00 BST 

Perry, a five-year-old African grey parrot, is for sale on a well-known pet trade website for £750. She looks in good condition with her large black bill, red tail and white mask and her owner says she can whistle the tune of Flower of Scotland, does a passable imitation of R2D2 and is “very clever and funny”.

What Perry’s Scottish owner does not tell prospective buyers is that the African grey is close to extinction in the wild largely because of the international pet trade.

Although there have been restrictions on the export of these small and intelligent birds since 2009, dealers pay a pittance for tens of thousands of them to be trapped every year in the rainforests of west and central Africa and smuggled out.

It’s easy to catch them, say researchers from Birdlife, a global grouping of conservation groups. A team of hunters will use decoys or go to the birds’ water and mineral licks in the forests where flocks gather. They then throw nets over them and take dozens at a time.

Once caught they will be smuggled over borders, stuffed in tiny cages and flown illegally to Europe, South Africa, the Middle East and China, where they may fetch up to £1,000 each. All this makes the African grey probably the most highly traded bird in the world, causing their numbers to plummet from Nigeria to Cameroon, and from Ivory Coast to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some conservationists estimate only 1% of their historical numbers remain.

This week moves are afoot that could give hope to the African grey’s future. Nine African states, the European Union and others will ask world governments and EU at the triennial meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) in Johannesburg to give the highest international protection to the bird. But it is far from the only species whose future hangs in the balance and whose fate could be determined at this year’s meeting. The Cites convention, signed by more than 180 countries and the EU, is the best hope the world has of stemming the growth in the £150bn a year wildlife trade and of reversing catastrophic animal and plant losses.

Read on 

Inside the Secret Trade That Threatens Rare Birds

Singapore is a major transit hub for trade in threatened birds, especially African grey parrots. 

By Laurel Neme

PUBLISHED APRIL 19, 2016

Singapore plays a key role as a major international transshipment hub for the global aviculture industry, according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the wildlife trade monitoring organization TRAFFIC. That’s especially true for trade in African grey parrots.

African greys are highly sought-after as pets because they’re so smart and talkative. (Alex, who lived with scientist Irene Pepperberg for 30 years, had a vocabulary of more than a hundred words and a mind-blowing range of cognitive skills beyond.) They’re native to Equatorial Africa, but populations are declining throughout their range. Although millions of African greys have been bred in captivity, demand for wild-caught birds remains high, and they’re especially vulnerable because they roost in large groups and tend to concentrate around water sources or mineral licks.

They’re now so popular that some range countries have proposed that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the body that regulates the global wildlife trade, categorize them as requiring maximum protection.

The new study, published in the journal Oryx, sheds light on the bird trade system. It reveals that Singapore has been a major conduit for birds from Africa and Europe to East Asia and the Middle East and that between 2005 and 2014 the city-state imported 212 bird species listed by CITES as needing protections, with African grey parrots the most intensively traded.

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This Talking Bird Is Disappearing From the Wild

Why is the beloved African Grey Parrot almost gone from the forests of West and central Africa?

Officials rescued these African Grey parrots from an illegal trader at the Ugandan border in 2011. A new study shows that the birds have almost disappeared in Ghana, where they once flourished.

By Paul Steyn

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 5, 2016

Flocks of chattering African Grey parrots, more than a thousand flashes of red and white on grey at a time, were a common site in the deep forests of Ghana in the 1990s. But a 2016 study published in the journal Ibis reveals that these birds, in high demand around the world as pets, and once abundant in forests all over West and central Africa, have almost disappeared from Ghana.

According to the study, the pet trade and forest loss—particularly the felling of large trees where the parrots breed—are major factors contributing to the decline.

Uncannily good at mimicking human speech, the African Grey (and the similar but lesser-known Timneh parrot) is a prized companion in homes around the world. Research has shown that greys are as smart as a two-five year-old human child—capable of developing a limited vocabulary and even forming simple sentences.

The grey parrot has a wide historic range across West and central Africa—1.1 million square miles (nearly three million square kilometers)—from Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa, through Nigeria and Cameroon and the Congo forests, to Uganda and western Kenya. Ghana accounts for more than 30,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers) of that range, but losses of greys there have been some of the most devastating.

Read on ...

African Grey Parrot close to extirpation in Ghana

Ghana has lost 90–99 per cent of its African Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus) population in the past two decades, according to a study recently published by a team of researchers from Ghana and the United Kingdom.

The population decline of Grey Parrot, a heavily traded cagebird species, is evidenced by the near-total loss of the major roosts known in 1992. Further evidence indicates an almost a tenfold reduction in bird encounter rates observed in the 1990s compared to 2014, as well as the perceptions of 96 per cent of the almost a thousand residents that were interviewed during the study.

Read on ...

California parrot that vanished for four years returns speaking Spanish: paper

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The owner of a parrot that spoke English with a British accent says the bird went missing for four years, only to return speaking Spanish and asking for someone named Larry, a Southern California newspaper reported on Monday.

Darren Chick told the Daily Breeze newspaper that he doesn't know where African grey parrot Nigel has been for four years but that aside from the language switch, the bird is doing fine back at home.

"He's doing perfect," Chick told the paper. "It's really weird, I knew it was him from the minute I saw him."

Nigel was discovered in the back yard of a Torrance couple who run a dog grooming business and originally was thought to belong to Teresa Micco, who had placed an ad for her own missing parrot, the Breeze reported.

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Reciprocity and parrots: Griffin the grey parrot appears to understand benefits of sharing, study suggests

Date:

February 25, 2014

Source:

University of Lincoln

Summary:

A study into whether grey parrots understand the notion of sharing suggests that they can learn the benefits of reciprocity. The research involved a grey parrot called Griffin, who consistently favoured the option of 'sharing' with two different human partners.

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The real-life angry bird: Vets seek owner of foul-mouthed parrot who told rescuers to 'bugger off'

Vets want to track down the owner of this foul-mouthed parrot - who told rescuers to 'bugger off' when they found it in the middle of the road.

The grumpy African Grey was spotted in the street near Guiseley, West Yorkshire, by a kind-hearted member of the public who tried to pick it up.

But the irate parrot repeatedly swore at him - using foul language and lashing out with its claws.

The angry avian told its rescuer to 'bugger off' several times, but he managed to put him in his car and drive to White Cross Vets in Guiseley.

The pet, whose gender and name are not known, immediately began attacking staff and squawking 'oi' at them when they tried to check him over.

Fortunately the bird later calmed down and vets were able to send an ID number which was attached by a ring on its leg to a specialist team to try and track down the owner.

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