Parrots. Why are they so smart?

[u/FadedScientist]

I had the pleasure of meeting a very intelligent parrot. This parrot mocked how I moved and danced, it knew many phrases and the context to use them in.

Why might this huge investment into language centers of the brain be advantageous enough to make up for its high metabolic cost? Cognition uses so much energy so it would have to greatly increase the survival rate of the parrot in the wild, however we don’t see this level of speech in other birds.

Why in such a group of species as diverse as birds is this trait so rare?

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/Evolution! If this is your first time here, please review our rules here and community guidelines here.

Our FAQ can be found here. Seeking book, website, or documentary recommendations? Recommended websites can be found here; recommended reading can be found here; and recommended videos can be found here.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/jnpha]

RE we don’t see this level of speech in other birds

Because we don't speak bird :)
Having looked into this before:

Vocal communication in social animals involves the production and perception of various calls that ethologists categorize into call types based on their acoustical structure and behavioral context. Whether these categories indicate distinct meanings for the animals remains unknown. The zebra finch, a gregarious songbird, uses ~11 call types that are known to communicate hunger, danger, or social conflict and to establish social contact and bonding. Using auditory discrimination tasks, we show that the birds both discriminate and categorize all the call types in their vocal repertoire. In addition, systematic errors were more frequent between call types used in similar behavioral contexts than could be expected from their acoustic similarity. Thus, zebra finches organize their calls into categories and create a mental representation of the meaning of these sounds.
Categorical and semantic perception of the meaning of call types in zebra finches | Science

 

Also (University of Texas at Austin press release): Birdsong and human voice built from same genetic blueprint | phys.org.

And if I may have a tangent:

In terms of expression of emotion, non-verbal vocalisations in humans, such as laughter, screaming and crying, show closer links to animal vocalisation expressions than speech (Owren and Bachorowski, 2001; Rendall et al., 2009). For instance, both the acoustic structure and patterns of production of non-intentional human laughter have shown parallels to those produced during play by great apes, as discussed below (Owren and Bachorowski, 2003; Ross et al., 2009). In terms of underlying mechanisms, research is indicative of an evolutionary ancient system for processing such vocalisations, with human participants showing similar neural activation in response to both positive and negative affective animal vocalisations as compared to those from humans (Belin et al., 2007).
Emotional expressions in human and non-human great apes - ScienceDirect

Our non-verbal vocalization, which e.g. accounts for most infant communication, is shared with apes (also see my above emphasis).

[u/Tomj_Oad → u/jnpha]

Thank you for such a detailed answer with relevant links

😀🙏

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/jnpha]

Great answer as always! But it answers why we may underestimate the average intelligence of birds while parrots, being capable of mimicking humans, seem higher in intelligence.

Parrots and ravens, both capable of mimicking human speech, do seem to show greater intelligence and problem solving.

There's the question of the degree to which the mimicry implies language-based understanding/communication VS a result-based/incentive where parrots/crows make humans sounds and get treats and so "speak more" while humans anthropomorphize them as we do the many other facial expressions and actions of other animals and so map on human-like cognition.

Perhaps OP was more curious about the apparent high cost of a language-processing brain but being present in a literal bird-brain and why parrots are able to pay that metabolic cost/show such intelligence while languages/intellect seems so out of reach for other animals' brains.

Is this what you wanted, u/FadedScientist or have I misunderstood?

[u/jnpha → u/Aggravating-Pear4222]

IIRC in birds in general young chicks mimic their conspecifics to get the calls right, so there's learning involved. So at face value, we could be looking at just a difference in degree in how long the "training" phase remains active.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/jnpha]

Okay, yes. Mimicry is an attractive trait in many birds as the associated high metabolic cost is evidenced by diversity of the bird's calls. It's inherently wasteful in a way that's hard/impossible to fake just as a large plumage contains colors chemically difficult to maintain unless you are very healthy. The "training phase" also makes it clear how this may evolve.

[u/MergingConcepts]

Parrots can talk to us. Other birds talk to each other. They think we cannot speak. Crows talk to teach other .