23 Interesting Facts About Parrots

Parrots are extremely interesting birds, and it’s not just about the ability of some of them to talk. Smart and funny, it is not for nothing that they are so popular as pets in many countries.

• Parrots have an excellent sense of rhythm – they can really dance rhythmically to music.
• About a third of all parrot species are currently endangered due to human activity and poaching.
• In Australia, there are special schools for parrots, where these birds are taught to talk.
• Many parrots love alcohol. In nature, they get it by eating fermented fruits and nuts.
• In fact, parrots do not know how to talk in the usual sense of the word – they just remember and repeat the words. However, not only words – they can memorize and reproduce some other sounds.
• Parrots do not have vocal cords, so they produce all sounds with the help of their tongue and beak.
• The smallest parrots live in Papua New Guinea. The size of an adult parrot, or rather, its body length, is 8-9 centimeters.
• The largest parrots are Amazonian ones, they are the size of a three-year-old child. Their body length can exceed a meter.
• Flocks of parrots in the wild can be huge. The largest flock ever discovered numbered about 70 thousand birds!
• In search of food, cockatoo parrots can fly more than seven hundred kilometers per day.
• Most parrots eat plant food and sometimes catch insects, but kea parrots are real predators, they attack even fairly large animals, for example, sheep.
• The most popular pet parrot is the wavy parrot.
• In ancient Rome, a parrot was more expensive than a slave.
• Renowned naturalist Steve Irwin easily worked with alligators and venomous snakes, however, he also felt fear of parrots. This is such an unusual phobia, yes.
• Once in the United States, a pet parrot helped solve a burglary case. The criminals in the empty apartment called each other by their first names, without hesitation, and the parrot remembered these names and repeated them several times in the presence of the police, which helped the guards to take the trail.
• The most “intelligent” parrot named Jaco knew about four hundred words.
• Small parrots live for 15-25 years, but large ones can live all a hundred. Real centenarians.
• Today, there are more domestic parrots around the world than wild parrots living in nature.
• Of all the countless species of birds, only parrots can eat food in their paws.
• Parrots were domesticated about three thousand years ago.
• Cockatoo can wiggle a tuft located on their head, that is, a comb.
• Many parrots live in a warm climate, but the kea parrots mentioned above prefer to live in the mountains where cold reigns.
• A big parrot, such as a cockatoo, can easily bite a person’s finger with its 10-centimeter beak.