Of what natural use is a parrot’s, myna’s, etc ability to mimic a human voice? In the wild, do they mimic other birds’ calls to assume their territory? Or is it a defense function?
The only parrots I’ve seen in the wild (and, admittedly, they may not be a “speaking” species) don’t mimic anything – they just squawk and sqwawk, noisily.
Here are a couple of Staff Reports on the subject, the first by me, the second by Doug
How come parrots, etc., talk but chickens don’t?
Ugh! The thought of a husky-voiced hummingbird fills me with dread … and a certain frisson!
So those two reports (and thank you for those, by the way) offer a certain level of explanation why birds would mimic other birds, but I still wonder: why human speech? Or are the noises we produce no more difficult to reproduce that any other bird call, be it a twitter, caw, or trill?
There’s nothing special about human speech. Bird mimics will imitate anything in their enviroment; pet birds of some species will imitate ringing phones, squeaking doors, etc. We are just very tuned in to their imitations of human speech, and encourage it.
As an anecdote, there’s a guy that lives on the ground floor of my apartment complex, and he has a parrot (breed unknown) named Larry that lives in a big cage on his back porch. Larry can ask “What?” in such a way that it’s indistinguishable from human speech; I’ve heard people, speaking in the parking lot, repeat themselves, believing that Larry’s query came from a neighbor. He also chuckles and yells “Shut up!”, althought that sounds more like a “cartoon” parrot.
Colibri, thanks for your input.
In David Attenborough’s Life of Birds (I think) they show film of a bird in New Zealand (I think) that’s a very gifted natural mimic. Even though it lived in the middle of the jungle, its song was contaminated with human sounds. You could very clearly hear a camera shutter, followed by the film rewinding. It also did chainsaws, bulldozers, and planes taking off. Really amazing. But in the case of this particular bird, the mimicry was used for a mating call. For some reason, females of the species seem to go for the best mimics.
You are thinking of the Australian Lyrebird.
A few years ago I was doing bird surveys in Gabon in central Africa. There was a bird called a Robin-Chat that used to serenade us every morning at breakfast with its repertoire of mimicked calls. We were able to tell that several bird species were in the area, even though we hadn’t actually observed them, because the Robin-Chat was mimicking their calls. They are like little tape recorders scattered through the jungle.
I’m sceptical of those reports. My parrot mimics, but she mimics in the correct context. She doesn’t spout words or sounds randomly but does it when she sees the same context as when she first heard the sound. For instance when I get the potato chips out she starts making crunching sounds. When I make something to drink she starts making swallowing or gulping sounds. When the other bird is running around free she starts shouting “come here” which is what she’s heard before when that bird is on the loose.
These sounds aren’t being used as mating calls or greeting calls even (although she does have a greeting call). If anything I think a better answer is she’s using them to alert me what’s going on or what’s about to happen. She also uses words for meaning to some degree. No means no to her. And step up is what she says when she wants to “step up” (come off her cage).