Keeping a parrot is something many people have thought of doing. Their beautiful colours, variety, photogenic appearance, friendly nature, and the fact that they can talk all make them an attractive pet. But how much do you really know about them?
The following five facts may amaze, delight and amuse you – and show you there is much more to parrots than you might have previously thought.
Parrots are omnivores
Parrots mainly eat things like seeds and nuts, but can also enjoy fruit and vegetables, including items as varied as bananas, carrots and spinach.
However, they are not vegetarians, but omnivorous. In the wild, they will often consume invertebrates, so beetles and bugs can and should be included in their diet to ensure they get lots of protein.
Parrots have a special organ to help them talk
Parrots do not have a mouth or larynx like humans, but they do have an organ in the throat called a syrinx. This is more flexible than a larynx and enables them to produce a wide range of sounds, including reproducing human speech.
They also have a brain that can work out how to mimic calls and sounds in their flock, which in this case will include their human hosts. Many birds do not have this adaptive capacity, but parrots do, alongside songbirds like crows.
Parrots can use their beak like an extra limb to climb
Being able to talk is not the only trick parrots have. It seems that they can use their beaks like a limb to help with climbing a tree. Three years ago, scientist Michael Granatosky, himself a parrot owner, observed the way his pet used its beak to help haul itself up a tree.
Following this up, he found that while the human neck can only support 19 per cent of the average body weight, in parrots it is 70 per cent. Moreover, the beak and neck have the same lifting capacity as the bird’s legs.
The Norwegian Blue May Have Been Real
Since parrots are tropical birds, the notion of a variety called the Norwegian Blue is obviously absurd, which is why it was at the centre of the famous Monty Python dead parrot sketch.
Or is it? In 2012, palaeontologist and Monty Python fan David Waterhouse revealed that a fossilised wing bone indicated that parrots first appeared in Scandinavia around 55 million years ago, when the region was warmer than now and nearer the equator, before the birds later migrated south as Scandinavia drifted north.
The colour of the plumage on the prehistoric parrot is not known, but it gained the nickname Norwegian Blue nonetheless!
There are more than 350 types of parrots
There are more than 350 different species of parrots in the world today, of which 330 are classed as true parrots, while others include cockatoos.
While they may not be Norwegian, some are blue. Like the blue feathers on other birds such as blue tits or kingfishers, this colour is not produced by pigment, but microscopic structures that scatter all light waves in the spectrum except blue – the same effect that makes the sky look blue.
These are just some of the amazing facts you can discover about parrots, making them some of the most fascinating birds to keep.
