Where does African grey parrot come from?
The grey parrot comes from the forests of equatorial Africa, from Ivory Coast across the Congo basin to Kenya. Famous as one of the best talkers among birds, it has been taken from the wild in huge numbers for the pet trade.
A parrot of African forests
The grey parrot's range runs from the eastern part of Ivory Coast to Kenya, and it also lives on islands such as Bioko and Príncipe. It favours dense forest but is also found at forest edges and in gallery and savanna forest. Carl Linnaeus described it in 1758 as Psittacus erithacus. Its close relative, the Timneh parrot, was long counted as part of the same species, but a genetic study published in 2007 led to its being treated as a species of its own.
A talker with a mind
Grey parrots are among the most intelligent birds, and they mimic human speech and other sounds tirelessly, which has made them one of the most popular pet birds. Many have performed some tasks at the level of a four- to six-year-old child. The most famous was Alex, studied for 30 years by the animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg. He used more than 100 words, could name colours, shapes and materials, and in 2005 Pepperberg reported that he understood the idea of zero.
Why people think of the Amazon
Talking parrots are often linked with South America, home of the Amazon parrots, about 30 species, many of which can also mimic human speech. But the grey parrot is African, and its fame has cost it dearly. More than a million wild grey parrots were probably traded between 1982 and 2001, and many die between capture and market. In one West African country, numbers fell by 90 to 99% after 1992. In 2016 the IUCN listed the species as Endangered, and CITES gave it its highest protection.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Grey parrot ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Alex (parrot) ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Amazon parrot ↗ · news.mongabay.com ↗
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