I have to tell you what my parrot did that convinced me they are some of the smartest animals around. This is a true story about our African Grey, Oscar, and it happened about 18 years ago, when Oscar was about 3 and still getting to know us.

Of course we have tried to teach Oscar to speak in English, and he has counted to 5, has sentences he likes to say, and has even made up his own sentences and used them at appropriate times. There are a lot of videos you can watch showing such things. If you think those don’t show some degree of intelligence, that the bird is just “parroting” or repeating back words and phrases they have learned, ask yourself this: how many sounds your parrot makes have you learned to pronounce correctly, and use at appropriate times? It seems to me, parrots learn a lot more from us than we do from them, and to me, that’s an argument that they are smarter than we are!

But that’s not the type of story this is. This is a story about whistling. Now, like most parrots, Oscar likes to whistle some tunes he has learned, and he knows a lot of them. There are two people who have taught him tunes, me and my wife. She is a musician and gets tunes right, but I definitely don’t—and I can’t really tell how badly I mess up the tune, either, I am essentially tone deaf. Fortunately Oscar learns most of his tunes from my wife; I think it must be at least partly because she whistles the same tune every time, but I make different mistakes each time I whistle, so Oscar may be confused about what tune I am trying to whistle.

So one night, I was sitting and watching TV with Oscar nearby, and he made a sound to get my attention. I know he wanted my attention because he “pointed” at me: he cocked his head to stare at me with one eye, and made a clear show that he was looking at me. Then he whistled a tune he was learning, just the way my wife whistles it—correctly. Then he “pointed” at me again, and whistled the same tune; but this time he did it wrong, like me! He clearly showed that he could tell my wife whistled it one way, while I tried to whistle the same tune, but badly. Pretty smart trick, right?

But then he did something that amazed me. He “pointed” at me again, and then he chuckled! He actually laughed at me! More than that: he was _making fun of me_! I was amazed! Not only did he know how to whistle the song correctly, he knew I was doing it _wrong_, not just different. And, he planned out a sequence of staring actions and whistled tunes, and performed that sequence on his own initiative. He had a message for me, and he knew how to tell me! He said that I am a bad whistler, but he was better at whistling than I am.

He never did it again. Apparently he agrees with David Byrne of Talking Heads, who sang “say something once; why say it again?”He wasn’t mimicking us; he had something he wanted to say, and he figured out how to say it.

That’s how smart parrots are.

http://streamable.com/r0rrhm

It just goes to show how intelligent some animals can be .

Parrots are very smart I've had several over the years And I have just bought an orange winged Amazon Freddie and he's unbelievable smart I sit n watch him and some of the things he does cracks me up lol