T
alking, or even imitating sound, is not just a simple matter
of opening and closing the mouth, as some people believe.
A complex system is required for this action to take place,
and all parts of this system must be synchronized in perfect work-
ing order. Birds with a talent for sound mimicry enjoy all of these re-
quirements and demonstrate their ability in extraordinary ways.
Some of these species have a talent rarely found in any other
creature except man. The best example of this are parrots, which can
imitate, in addition to human speech, a wide range of sounds that
even humans can’t duplicate convincingly—for example, as the
creaking of a door, the cap being removed from a bottle, a ringing
telephone, or a tune being whistled. This talent to imitate, observ-
able in parrots and some other bird species, is not an ability that can
be acquired by coincidence. For any living creature to imitate a
sound it has heard, it needs to have complex physiological struc-
tures already in place. Particularly in the case of
birds that can closely imitate the human voice
in terms of tone, stress and expression, these
structures must be very sophisticated.
For a bird to reproduce a word or a
melody it has heard, it needs to have an
appropriate physical structure. Its sense
of hearing must be functioning perfectly,
and it must be able to memorize the infor-
mation received by the senses and the abil-
ity to conceptualize meaning in its own
terms.
