Get Informed About Parrots

Alex lived to be 31 years old and died suddenly and unexpectedly.   Many parrots live much longer lives so it makes them a good animal to study.  By the time he died he could identify colors, shapes and numbers and many times exceeded what was expected of him intellectually by the scientific community. 

Pepperberg did graduate work at both MIT and Harvard and received a Ph.D. in Chemistry - a hard science.  In 1973 she decided to study the language ability of Alex the African Grey Parrot at Purdue University.  She spent her whole career between 1973 and September 6, 2007 studying and training Alex at various colleges.

The way our brains and eyes see and perceive color is very different between humans and Parrots.  How do we know?  Well we do not know the extent of the difference because the human eye only sees in three dimensions and the parrots see in four dimensions.  We discovered this by physically scientifically studying their eyes.  We call the parrots vision tetrachromatic (the ability to see, using the extra type of cones in their eye) which enables them to detect light wavelengths that are invisible to the humans naked eye.  These cones are either violet sensitive or ulraviolet sensitive.

There are 17 species of Macaws including:  the Hyacinth, Glaucous, Lear’s, Spix’s, Blue-and-Yellow, Blue-throated, Military, Great Green, Scarlet, Red-and-Green, Scarlet, Red-and-green, Red-fronted, Yellow-collared, Chestnut-fronted, Red-bellied, Illinger’s, Blue-headed and the Red-shouldered Macaw.  As you can see from their names they are all very colorful.  Their beauty has been their biggest enemy because there is a thriving business in poaching for the illegal pet trade. 

We have a wonderful Lorikeet exhibit at the Denver Zoo.  I've visited it many times.  I'm still in the process of researching the Lorikeet.  So check back, I'm working on it.

Budgerigars are parakeets.  People have shortened the name to Budgie.  For scientific research these birds work well partly due to their size.  There is very little concern about the Budgie’s conservation since they flourish.  The English Budgie is larger than its cousin the Australian Budgie .  The budgie is the most popular pet bird worldwide, but in the U.S. the Cockatiel is more numerous as a pet. Captive Budgies live five to ten years.