PARROT DIALECTS (cont.)
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.241717
https://phys.org/news/2025-05-social-networks-vocal-diversity-monk.html
How social networks shape the vocal diversity of monk parakeets
by Max Planck Society / May 6, 2025
“In the urban parks of Barcelona, Spain, the calls of a tropical parrot fill the air. The bright green monk parakeet, native to South America, has found a new home in European cities. Monk parakeets thrive in huge colonies where they communicate with each other using many distinct sounds—offering scientists a unique window into understanding the interplay of individual social relationships with vocal variety. For social animals, communication is a key that unlocks the benefits of group living. It’s well known that animals with more complex social lives tend to have more intricate ways of communicating, from the clicks and whistles of dolphins to the calls of primates. While this pattern is found broadly in many species, a new study on wild parrots drills deep into the social and vocal lives of individual birds. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) analyzing the social networks of monk parakeets in Spain have uncovered how an individual’s social ties shape the calls these birds make. The findings are published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
The MPI-AB scientists spent several months over the course of two years closely observing 337 monk parakeets, documenting their social lives as well as recording all their screeches, squawks, and whistles, which totaled 5,599 vocalizations. The team examined these calls in terms of repertoire diversity (how many different sounds a bird can make) and contact-call diversity (how much this specific type of call differs). They also mapped out the birds’ social networks, analyzing everything from how often they interacted with others to the strength of their relationships. Based on this data, the team could conclude that individual parakeets living in larger groups did indeed produce a more variable repertoire of sounds. They also found that female parakeets had a more diverse repertoire than males, which is unusual for birds, they say. “This research is a really important first step,” says Simeon Smeele, the first author of the study. “It really looks like there are some call types that are used uniquely in social situations. And it’s really interesting to see that females appear to produce more of these, suggesting they are the more social sex.”
Social network analysis showed that parakeets with more central positions in the social structure—those that were potentially more influential in the group—tended to have more diverse vocal repertoires. In other words, the most social individuals seemed to have a better vocabulary than less social individuals. “What I find really exciting is that we were able to link what individuals say to very specific levels of sociality,” says Smeele, who conducted the study as a doctoral student at MPI-AB. “For example, close friends that allowed each other to approach within pecking distance sounded less like each other, as if they were trying to sound unique in their little gang.”
The results offer clues about the evolution of complex communication, including human language. Previous research has demonstrated that sociality is linked to a more diverse repertoire in species ranging from Carolina chickadees to marmosets. This study goes further by showing how vocal communication is shaped by the web of an individual’s social network. Smeele says, “The next big step is to better understand what each of the sounds mean, a real mammoth task, since most of the social squawking happens in large groups with many individuals talking at the same time.”
More information: Simeon Q. Smeele et al, The effect of social structure on vocal flexibility in monk parakeets, Royal Society Open Science (2025). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.241717
BILINGUAL PARROTS
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.0659
https://forbes.com/scientists-document-cultural-change-in-dialects-of-wild-parrots
Scientists Document Cultural Change In The Dialects Of Wild Parrots Over 22 Years
by GrrlScientist / Sep 20, 2024
“Humans speak in their own languages and dialects, but in general, people are unaware that other animals may also speak in their own languages and dialects. Likewise, whales, chimpanzees, and bats are known to speak in their own dialects. Perhaps unsurprisingly, another such example of speaking with regional dialects is parrots: a recent study published by a collaborative team of researchers, Christine Dahlin of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and Timothy Wright, Grace Smith-Vidaurre, and Molly K. Genes from New Mexico State University documented the dialects of wild yellow-naped Amazon parrots throughout their natural range in Costa Rica over a 22-year span.
Yellow-naped amazons, Amazona auropalliata, are large, mostly yellowish-green parrots that form long-term pair bonds, living along the Pacific coast. They roost in large flocks at night, and disperse into smaller groups to forage throughout the rainforest during the day. They share a variety of calls with their roostmates, of which contact calls are the most common. Contact calls are used to maintain contact and to communicate with each other over distances. It is these calls that show distinct regional differences that are characteristic of dialects. In their initial surveys in 1994, the researchers recorded three acoustically distinct contact call types, which they named North, South and Nicaraguan, based on the geographic region where each specific call type could be heard. In 2005, the researchers returned to check on the parrots and their dialects.
They found both the parrots’ acoustic call structures and dialect boundaries were essentially unchanged. But tragically, during this same time period, the parrots’ populations suddenly collapsed. In the last three generations alone, yellow-naped Amazon parrot lost more than 92% of its population in Central and South America, mostly due to habitat loss and poaching for the illegal wildlife trade. In response, the IUCN quickly uplisted the yellow-naped Amazon parrots’ conservation status twice, first to vulnerable and then to critically endangered. As the persecuted parrots’ populations crashed, their regional contact calls also changed. The researchers found that many parrots were becoming bilingual as they formed pair bonds across the formerly distinct North-South acoustic boundary.
https://youtu.be/MiT6EgyKKLg
Amongst parrots speaking the North dialect, the researchers observed many bilingual parrots using both the North and the South dialects. Not only is this acoustic drift creating bilingual parrots but it is giving rise to new contact call types and to calls with greater overall acoustic variation. “The observed cultural changes may represent adaptive responses to changing group sizes and patterns of social association,” Dr Dahlin and collaborators noted in their published study. This study’s findings suggest that cultural traditions in wild parrots, such as dialects, are flexible and appear to change in response to population and environmental changes.
This flexibility has worrying implications for threatened species — how will bilingual parrots be able to communicate with each other? (Read more about that here.) “Some of this change could be disruptive, with the potential to further exacerbate population declines,” Dr Dahlin and collaborators observed in their paper. “However, an increase in bilingual sites could also be a sign of adaptability.” In fact, the acoustic flexibility of bilingual parrots may indeed provide a survival advantage. Birds that can communicate with more groups may be able to share more information, locate suitable mates, access foraging areas, or gain roosting privileges.
Of course, more research is necessary to directly tie the cultural changes that Dr Dahlin and collaborators documented in these parrots’ learned vocalizations to the demographic upheaval experienced by this species. Thus, this data emphasizes the importance of long-term studies for understanding how culture evolves, and what forces drive this evolution. This study also highlights how vocal learning is important to the survival of wild parrot populations and how this ability may serve an adaptive role in the wild. It also provides insight into the disruptive human impacts on wildlife exploitation. “Ultimately, monitoring cultural behaviors, such as the rate of change in dialects, can help wildlife managers understand anthropogenic impacts, population dynamics and conserve species.”
Source: Christine R. Dahlin, Grace Smith-Vidaurre, Molly K. Genes and Timothy F. Wright (2024). Widespread cultural change in declining populations of Amazon parrots, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291(2029) | DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.0659
PREVIOUSLY
CONVERSATIONAL PARROT
https://spectrevision.net/2022/12/14/conversational-parrot/
PARROT DIALECTS
https://spectrevision.net/2021/02/18/parrot-dialects/
WILD PARROTS LEARNING to TALK
https://spectrevision.net/2012/01/19/wild-parrots-learning-to-talk/