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It’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.
There was a prize-winning photo of a lynx doing that to a rat, a few days ago. https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-th... Then further down the page, "A sika deer carries the interlocked severed head of a rival male that had died after their battle". Nature, eh.
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It’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.
Life sucks. I bet the 10s of 1000s of animals used to source the protein in your cat food had a great life though
> Dr. Irene Pepperberg studied an African grey parrot named Alex for 30 years. Alex could identify objects, colours, shapes, and numbers. He understood abstract concepts like "same" and "different." His vocabulary exceeded 100 words. When he died in 2007, his last words to Pepperberg were reportedly "You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow." I don't care how you define intelligence -- that one's hard to brush off.…
Ah yeah that's exactly what it was but thought I'd try to add a bit more emotion to this point haha. Even if the parrot said this every night as a good night - its still very sweet that Alex said that every night :)
> "I don't care how you define intelligence -- that one's hard to brush off."
If your audience conceived it as possibly being a merely repeated phrase that the researcher probably said thousands of times, not something the parrot actually understood, then it is very easy to brush off as something we already knew parrots could do.
If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.
Many animals (including birds, dogs, horses) like the sanctuary and comfort of a cage and choose to use them, but obviously it shouldn't be used like a prison.
Adding to this a chart of neuron count [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
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There was a prize-winning photo of a lynx doing that to a rat, a few days ago. https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-th... Then further down the page, "A sika deer carries the interlocked severed head of a rival male that had died after their battle". Nature, eh.
Sure but housecats aren’t nature
If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.
We have some feral colonies set up in places like Miami and San Francisco, but not all species thrive in warm locations.
That said, my palm sized green cheek conure is rarely in his extremely large cage (it's 4 by 4 feet). Door is always open unless he's sleeping or we're out of the house. Usually he's with me on my shoulder when I'm working during the day and gives his "2 cents" when I'm in meetings.
Most parrots kept as pets prefer it locked for security reasons. He'll get anxious if it's not when he's trying to sleep.
I've seen a lot of terrible bird owners, but I also know plenty that enrich their bird's lives. My little conure has a surprisingly extensive vocabulary for a species not known for speaking.
He says "poo" when when he has to poop, "what's up?" when he greets anyone, "whatcha doing", "", "yeah!" (mimicking Little Jon), "stop" (when he doesn't like what we're doing), "good boy", "Love you" and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head.
Worth nothing that the "mirror test" may not be accurate for a lot of animals - like dogs. Dogs are a lot more sensitive to smell, and can pass smell-based mirror-test-equivalents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Insects
When it first came out I don't think anyone quite knew what to make of that, and I'm not sure anything's changed since.
Makes sense, given that to birds, optimizing for weight is everything. But seeing that the ridiculously smart border collies have a comparatively low density of neurons, clearly there’s more to intelligence than that.
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Ah yeah that's exactly what it was but thought I'd try to add a bit more emotion to this point haha. Even if the parrot said this every night as a good night - its still very sweet that Alex said that every night :)
Then to put it bluntly; you lied to your audience. > "I don't care how you define intelligence -- that one's hard to brush off." If your audience conceived it as possibly being a merely repeated phrase that the researcher probably said thousands of times, not something the parrot actually understood, then it is very easy to brush off as something we already knew parrots could do.