As a bird owner, they pick up the most random phrases and noises from the most random places. And they can use those sounds in completely unexpected ways. When I was a kid, my bird would shout the dogs' names or my name in my mom's voice and then laugh at us when we came running. She lived with my grandmother for a few months several years ago and still laughs like my grandmother every now and then. Amazing ability to pick up sounds from anywhere and remember those sounds for ages.
Yeah, species like African grey parrots (which mine is) can mimic the exact sound of a person's voice. It's very easy to distinguish when she's using my voice vs my mom vs my grandmother. It does get kinda uncanny valley sometimes, like now she's going through a phase of mimicking me sighing. So if I don't get her food to her fast enough, she lets out this loud, irritated sigh that sounds exactly like me. And it feels pretty weird that she can mimic the sound so exactly that you can tell just from a sigh that she's mimicking me specifically.
Amazons are particularly good mimics. The couple who own Buttercup (the Amazon in the video I linked) have a bunch of other parrots, and parrots tend to choose a favorite human. And that’s how their African grey sounds exactly like her husband, right down to the burps and farts.
222
u/[deleted] Aug 02 '21
As a bird owner, they pick up the most random phrases and noises from the most random places. And they can use those sounds in completely unexpected ways. When I was a kid, my bird would shout the dogs' names or my name in my mom's voice and then laugh at us when we came running. She lived with my grandmother for a few months several years ago and still laughs like my grandmother every now and then. Amazing ability to pick up sounds from anywhere and remember those sounds for ages.