50 Fun Facts About Parrot

Roughly how many parrot species are there?

They fall into 101 genera and four families, with the richest variety in South America and Australasia.

What fraction of parrot species are threatened with extinction?

That is a higher aggregate extinction risk than any comparable group of birds, driven by trapping and habitat loss.

Along with parrots, which other bird group is considered the most intelligent?

Parrots' ability to imitate human speech has made them pets since ancient times.

As of 2021, roughly how many parrots live in captivity, about half of all those alive?

Parrots are subjected to more exploitation than any other group of wild birds; most captives are household pets.

Parrots are the only creatures to display true tripedalism, meaning what?

When climbing, the beak pulls with as much force as a primate's arm; researchers call the gait 'beakiation'.

Molecular studies suggest parrots evolved about 59 million years ago on which ancient supercontinent?

That fits their diversity in South America and Australasia, though the fossil record is oddly richer in the north.

Genomic analysis shows parrots are the sister group of which lineage?

Together they form the clade Psittacopasserae, whose next-nearest relatives are the falcons.

What older English word for a parrot was first used in the 1500s?

The scientific name Psittacus goes back to Ctesias in the 5th century BC, borrowed from an Indian name for a parakeet.

Which parrot family holds the cockatoos?

Cockatoos alone have a movable crest and lack the Dyck-texture feathers that give other parrots their vivid colours.

What is the smallest species in the order Psittaciformes?

It weighs under 10 grams and measures 8 cm; the biggest species reach a metre in length and 4 kg in weight.

Which is the longest parrot, at about a metre?

The heaviest is New Zealand's ground-dwelling kākāpō at around 4 kg.

A big macaw's bite force is about 35 kg per square centimetre, close to that of what?

The upper mandible is not fused to the skull, which lets it move independently and adds to the crushing power.

Touch receptors along the inner edges of a parrot's beak are known collectively as what?

They allow the fine manipulation that lets a parrot rotate a seed and peel off its husk.

Unlike humans, parrot vision is sensitive to what?

Some species even show sexual differences in plumage that only appear in the ultraviolet.

Studies of Australian parrots showed they exhibit what human-like trait when picking up food?

Adults are almost exclusively left-footed or right-footed, with the split varying by species.

What is the predominant plumage colour among parrots?

Cockatoos buck the trend, being mostly black or white with touches of red, pink or yellow.

Which species is the most striking exception to the rule that male and female parrots look alike?

Males are green and females red; the difference is so stark they were once thought to be separate species.

Which now-extinct parrot once lived as far north as the southern United States?

The thick-billed parrot and green parakeet have also reached the US; today feral monk parakeets thrive even in New York City.

Which is the only parrot that lives in an alpine climate?

It is endemic to the Southern Alps of New Zealand's South Island, and has been filmed making and using tools.

How many parrot species are truly migratory?

Most other species just make poorly understood regional wanderings, and some are entirely nomadic.

Why do many parrots in the Americas, Africa and New Guinea eat clay?

Seeds are often chemically defended, so parrots strip coats and husks and then swallow clay as an antidote.

The kea has been recorded, uncommonly, hunting which large animal?

Sheep farmers once had a bounty on it; the golden-winged parakeet, by contrast, preys on water snails.

Which parrots, unusually, build stick nests in trees rather than using cavities?

A few ground parrots of Australasia nest on the ground; almost everyone else uses a hollow.

Parrots have no vocal cords; they make sound with which organ?

It sits at the base of the trachea, and parrots share a learned vocal repertoire only with hummingbirds and songbirds.

Alex, the bird studied for 30 years by Irene Pepperberg, was which species?

'Alex' stood for avian language (or learning) experiment; Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop aged about one.

In 2005 Pepperberg reported that Alex understood which mathematical concept?

Asked the difference between two identical objects he answered 'None'; he could count and label colours and shapes.

What were Alex the parrot's last words?

He was found dead in his cage in September 2007 aged 31, with a vocabulary of over 100 words he seemed to understand.

Which grey parrot has been reported to have a vocabulary of around a thousand words?

He has been said to invent words in context and use correct tenses.

Puck, the bird with the largest recorded vocabulary at 1,728 words, was what kind of parrot?

He died in 1994 and entered Guinness World Records the following year; his owner was American Camille Jordan.

Which is the most popular pet bird species of all?

Budgies are said to be the third most popular pet in the world after dogs and cats.

Wild budgerigars are naturally what colour?

Blues, whites, greys and even crested birds are all products of captive breeding since the 19th century.

After the greys, which group is regarded as the next-best talkers?

Grey parrots have been prized as mimics since antiquity; wild greys even imitate other bird species.

Large cockatoos, amazons and macaws can live to what age?

That longevity is why so many big parrots outlive their owners and end up needing new homes.

Cookie, recognised as the world's oldest living parrot, was a pink cockatoo at which zoo?

He arrived in 1934 from Sydney aged about one and died in 2016 at 83, the last survivor of the zoo's opening collection.

Which country has banned the export of its native birds since 1960?

The EU followed with a permanent ban on wild bird imports in 2007, having previously taken some two million live birds a year.

The kākāpō is the world's only what?

It is also nocturnal, the heaviest parrot, the only one with a lek breeding system, and may live to 100.

Sirocco the kākāpō became a conservation 'spokes-bird' after being filmed doing what?

The clip from Stephen Fry's Last Chance to See went viral, and Sirocco later inspired Slack's party parrot emoji.

Kākāpō numbers rose from 50 individuals to how many by 2024?

Translocation to predator-free islands, intensive management and supplementary feeding did it.

A parrot appears on the flag of which Caribbean nation?

The sisserou is its national bird; St Vincent's national bird is also a parrot.

In Hindu mythology the parrot is the mount of which god?

The Moche of ancient Peru also depicted parrots in their art, and Rumi told of 'The Merchant and the Parrot' in 1250.

The Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch concerns a non-existent breed called what?

John Cleese's Mr Praline complains that it is dead; Michael Palin's shopkeeper insists it is 'pining for the fjords'.

The Dead Parrot sketch first aired in which year?

It was in the eighth episode of the first series, 'Full Frontal Nudity', written by Cleese and Graham Chapman.

Which four parrot species are exempt from CITES Appendix II because they are so common in captivity?

Every other parrot species is protected under Appendix II or stricter.

Since 1500, how many parrot species does the IUCN recognise as extinct?

That does not count birds like the New Caledonian lorikeet, unseen for a century but still officially critically endangered.

Pliny the Elder's first-century account describes Europeans keeping which parrot?

Its talking ability made it a status pet in the ancient world long before macaws reached Europe.

Which subfamily holds all the Neotropical parrots, from amazons and macaws to conures?

It ranges from northern Mexico and the Bahamas down to Tierra del Fuego.

What colour are parrot eggs?

In most species the female does all the incubating, though cockatoos, the blue lorikeet and the vernal hanging parrot share the job.

Which South American species nests in colonies of up to 70,000 birds?

Coloniality is rarer in parrots than expected, probably because most adopt old cavities rather than excavate their own.

Which pigment helps colourful parrot feathers resist feather-degrading bacteria?

Feathers rich in it resist Bacillus licheniformis better than white ones do.

Which 1681 play contains the first known relative of the phrase 'sick as a parrot'?

The modern expression means extreme disappointment, though it may trace to the disease psittacosis.