• Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzM
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    19 days ago

    Related: Alex the “genius” grey parrot. He already showed by himself parrots aren’t simply parroting (eh) words, they have a good sense that specific vocalisations refer to specific entities or even attributes. And it’s well known some other birds (like crows) have rather good cognition, except parrots have the vocal “apparatus” to do it in a way that resembles human speech.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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      19 days ago

      Isn’t there at least indications that corvids have an actual language, beyond just a set of specific calls? There have been indications they are able to transmit fairly complex information.

      • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzM
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        19 days ago

        There’s some amazing info on crow communication here: part 1, part 2. Not actual language* yet, but it shows they’re doing far more than caw-ing at each other, and they do associate meaning with specific calls.

        The first link even mentions crows raised by a human tend to repeat their names if they’re looking for the human; that’s really close to what the parrots do, it’s more like they have a name for the relationship than for themselves.

        *so far the closest I’ve seen was cetaceans using some sort of phoneme equivalent, and chimps pairing vocalisations for subtler meaning (e.g. up+threat = flying predator).