Snippets of Science

It’s a common cultural trope to have a parrot sat atop a pirate’s shoulder, squawking out, “Polly want a cracker!” This image may be based in more fact than previously believed. Not necessarily the image of the pirate, but the words used by the parrot. Research led by Dr. Lauryn Benedict from the University of Northern Colorado have found that pet parrots are able to use names in ways that closely mirror, but don’t match, our usage of them.

Beginning in 2020, parrot owners were able to contribute various phrases and names they had noticed being used by their birds to the “What Does Polly Say” survey on manyparrots.org. The international team used this data to create categories of types of names, including the parrot’s own name, the names of people, the names of other animals in the house, and the names of objects.

Of the birds that were able to use words, 47% also used names, as identified by the researchers. Slightly more than half of these were able to use one phrase that included a name, with 10 individuals, about 2.5% of the parrots that could use names, reported as having six or more of these phrases.

Parrot owners, or anyone who has seen parrots in various forms of social media content, may feel they knew this already. Particularly online, we see many examples of incredible feats of these birds naming objects and even apparently making jokes. As interesting as these are, when viewing seemingly incredible things on the internet, consumers should exercise caution. Examples that are most likely to get posted, and then even more likely to go viral, are often the ones that are out of the ordinary.

This work gets science closer to understanding the role of verbal communication, of talking, in parrots. The ways in which they use names are similar to the ways we do, but the ways in which they differ may give us insight into how their minds work. One parrot was reported as saying, “Goodnight, [other bird name]” to every other bird as their owner put them to bed, mirroring a similar roosting behaviour in wild parrots. The most common name parrots say is their own, often as a way to get attention and interaction. This difference could show that parrots aren’t necessarily mimicking the ways in which humans use names, but using the names we give in their own way.

It is important to not draw any sweeping conclusions. As this is self-reported data outside of a lab environment, it can be difficult to draw large conclusions. The researchers are careful to say that this is only a first step toward understanding these feathery creatures. This study can at least let us know the pirate’s parrot may in fact know who Polly is, and what a cracker is.