I LOVE YOU, GARY

[Guest guest]

Dear Ms Nikki Green and AAPN members,

The

attached news item is not Asian but I found it so engrossing and

charming that I thought it well worth posting. I guess it shows that

being bird brained might have more to it than is popularly conceived

and should really make people ponder on the thought processes of non

human animals.

Best wishes,

 

Yours sincerely,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1550243.htm

Last Update: Wednesday, January 18, 2006. 2:00pm (AEDT)

Parrot squawks on secret love affair

A talking parrot in the UK has been blamed for breaking up his owner's

relationship.

 

For a year, Chris Taylor had been living happily with his partner Suzy

Collins in the city of Leeds in northern England.

 

But his girlfriend and his pet parrot Ziggy never really got along.

 

Looking back Mr Taylor remembers Ziggy once made kissing noises when

the name Gary was mentioned on the TV.

 

But he did not become suspicious until Ziggy began saying " hello Gary "

every time his girlfriend's mobile phone rang.

 

Then, one night, when he was cuddling his girlfriend on the couch, the

feathers really flew, in a voice identical to his girlfriends, Ziggy

the Parrot said loudly: " I love you Gary " .

 

From his cage in the corner, Ziggy had witnessed secret liaisons

between Suzy Collins and a man called Gary.

 

The parrot had squawked.

 

This is not unusual according to Greg Glendell, the UK's only

full-time consultant on parrot behaviour.

 

" I have birds that need retraining, and they will often come out with

things in the owner's voice, " he said.

 

He says Ziggy's breed is particularly good at mimicking people's voices.

 

Chris Taylor's girlfriend has moved out, but so too has Ziggy.

 

The computer programmer told The Times newspaper in Britain, it was

too much hearing his pet constantly call out Gary's name in the voice

of his ex.

 

Ms Collins has also spoken to The Times - she is surprised her former

partner got rid of Ziggy because, she says, during their relationship

he spent more time talking to the bird, than he did to her.

 

She was quoted as saying: " I couldn't stand Ziggy, but it now appears

the feeling was mutual. "

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science & article=UPI-1-20050518-12\

255400-bc-blueplanet-birdbrains.xml

Blue Planet: What bird brains can tell us

By DAN WHIPPLE

BOULDER, Colo., May 18 (UPI) -- Humans have long assumed one of the

things that separates us from the lower animals is the quality of our

minds.

 

 

 

Related Headlines

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social ... > full story

 

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bird doing loop-the-loops or pulling out its feathers may provide

insight into similar stress-caused human behavior, Purdue scientists

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Our view of the capacity of animal minds has been heavily influenced

for the past 400 years by Rene Descartes, who argued in part that

since animals lack linguistic capability, they lack a mental life.

Descartes thought that animals were simply automata made of meat. Even

Descartes may not have been convinced completely of his own opinions,

since he kept a small dog himself, breed unknown, one Monsieur Grat,

of whom he was very fond.

 

But modern scientific studies show the distance between animal minds

and human ones is not nearly so great as once believed. Studies of

learning and language in other animals have shown a remarkable degree

of intelligence and flexibility.

 

Studies of the brains of birds, of all things, have offered insights

into the evolutionary place of birds and their ability to learn

complex behavior. Blue Planet reported a few weeks ago on neurobiology

research that has completely revised the view of bird cognition.

 

" Over the past 30 years, we have learned that bird brain organization

is not what we thought it was, " Duke University neurobiologist Erich

Jarvis told UPI's Blue Planet. " People have been discovering that bird

behavior is a lot more complex than once thought. "

 

Further research on bird brains over the past few weeks provides

additional evidence that the long evolutionary effort from their

dinosaur ancestors to modern birds has not been wasted.

 

Timothy Gardner and colleagues reported in a paper in Science last

week that canaries, like humans, seem to have an innate language

sense. Gardner studied 16 canaries that were raised by their mothers

-- who didn't sing -- for the first 30 days of their lives, then were

transferred into recording chambers.

 

In these chambers, instead of natural canary songs, the canaries heard

synthetically generated music composed by Gardner.

 

" Each note is within the spectrum of what a canary might sing, "

Gardner told Blue Planet, " but the order is highly abnormal for

canaries. "

 

The bird learned these new songs " remarkably well, " Gardner said. " It

was the only song they were exposed to, and they did almost pitch

perfect imitations. They spent literally thousands of hours practicing

this song. "

 

When the birds grew up, the syntax of their song became more a normal

canary style.

 

" As they transition to adulthood, they begin to sing a normal canary

song, " Gardner told Blue Planet. " The sequences of the sounds they

heard as juveniles become rearranged to the regular syntactical

structure. Some abandoned it, some could imitate both. "

 

This sequence of language learning is very similar to one observed in

human beings.

 

" People have noticed a number of correlations, " Gardner said, " like

the existence of a sensitive period for learning. We are primed to

imitate language at an early age. What we're looking at in these

juvenile birds is this period of freedom prior to puberty. "

 

Gardner added when the bird matured the " imitated songs were

reprogrammed to form typical canary phrasing. Thus imitation and

innate song constraints are separate processes that can be segregated

in time: freedom in youth, rules in adulthood.

 

" I think people have often made the mistake of associating innate

behaviors with a lack of intelligence. That's often been an argument

for regarding humans as very different, " he said.

 

However, based on the work of linguist Noam Chomsky, scientists now

believe human language ability also is in large part innate --

flexible until puberty when the ability to absorb languages is great,

then much more restricted by rules learned in adulthood.

 

A paper in the June PLOS Biology shows how the neural organization of

pigeons is parallel to that assumed for humans.

 

" In 1861, Paul Broca proclaimed that the 'majesty of the human' could

be attributed to its superior faculties, such as abstraction and

judgment, and that these superior faculties lie within the province of

the 'anterior lobes of the brain,' " write Jonas Rose and Michael

Colombo of New Zealand's University of Otago.

 

" Executive control " of the brain -- the ability to plan one's behavior

to achieve a goal -- lies in the frontal lobe of humans and other

primates. Rose and Colombo also have found this executive control is

present in the humble pigeon, fundamental to memory and cognition.

 

" It would appear that the ability to filter relevant and irrelevant

information, which some have argued is a fundamental form of executive

control, is clearly not an exclusive feature of the mammalian brain, "

the authors wrote. " There is little doubt that it is commonplace to

richly interpret human behavior. But when you show that pigeon can

recognize itself in a mirror, or that a crow can manufacture a tool,

it is not just an interesting demonstration, but it also refines our

views regarding the neural mechanism that underlie such behavior. "

 

Blue Planet is a weekly series examining the relationship of humans to

the natural world, by veteran environmental reporter Dan Whipple.

E-mail: sciencemail

 

Copyright 2005 by United Press International. .

 

 

 

On 1/18/06, Nikki Green <nikkigreen wrote:

> A great (and scientific-data backed) article about the cognition of animals

> especially dogs for anyone doing animal welfare education etc. - one more

> reason why they should have rights!

>

> -

> " BEKOFF MARC " <marc.bekoff

> <undisclosed-recipients:>

> Wed 18 Jan 2006 05:31

> [EthologicalEthics] The secret life of pets

>

>

> > http://wholelifetimes.com/2006/01/petsmart0601.html

> >

> > WholeLife Times - January 2006 | Cover Story

> >

> >

> >

> >