Do parrots just imitate what they hear around them or can they form their own sentences based off what they hear and think?
In: Biology
This was tested in law in a Spanish court a while back.
Someone asked a friend to look after their parrot while they were away. When they returned, the parrot was dead – apparently it hadn’t been fed – not even once. They took the friend to court to get compensation. They sued for a very large amount claiming that the parrot was especially valuable since it could “talk”.
In the end the judge ruled in their favour but only awarded them the ordinary price of a new parrot. He ruled that the parrot could not “talk” but only make natural noises that imitated the sound of the human voice and that this was a common feature of all parrots.
In the course of their protests at this, the judge said something that I find quite amusing:
“No. Your parrot could not talk. Only mimic. If it could actually talk, it would have reminded the defendant to feed it.”
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