Why can parrots imitate human speech, but our closest relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas, cannot?
In: Biology
I have heard that some apes can, but it’s not common.
At least one Elephant can talk. It speaks a few words of Korean. You can find a video on the internet.
Quite a few birds can actually speak. Pretty much everything in the Corvid family like Ravens can “quoth the raven, ‘nevermore'” Starlings can also do the same. Many other birds as well. Parrots are the most famous, but they are far from the only ones.
There was reportedly one, and only one, seal that could say a few words. Make of that what you will.
So it’s more common than you think. But many birds have the ability to imitate a wide variety of sounds and some are intelligent enough to understand what words mean. That combination is not really present in any other animal to the same degree. Apes have the intelligence, but simply not the vocal cords.
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