Gallery & Knowledge
Real moments & real knowledge
WILD & Skippy in Tirol – and what really matters when it comes to parrots. Captured during experiences in the Imst district, the Pitztal and Ötztal.
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Worth knowing
Eight things about parrots almost nobody knows
Swipe sideways. Every card names its source.
WILD’s wings
When WILD came to us in January 2021 his wings had been cut back to the flesh. He still cannot fly, and the regrowing feathers keep breaking. That was not an accident. It was somebody’s decision.
WILD’s story → First-hand.Nobody came for him
Skippy was found on a street in Upper Austria. Nobody claimed him at the shelter. We adopted him after a month — and we still do not know exactly how old he is.
Meet Skippy → First-hand.105 decibels
A cockatoo gets louder than a jackhammer ten metres away. We measured 105 dB on our birds — ordinary conversation sits at about 47. If you live in a flat with thin walls, hear that once before you decide anything.
Measure it yourself → Our own measurement, on WILD and Skippy.Older than the Second World War
How old a parrot gets depends heavily on the species — but the range is enormous. The oldest documented parrot was Cookie, a Major Mitchell’s cockatoo at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. He arrived there as a youngster in 1934 and died in 2016, aged at least 82.
Our parrots → Guinness World Records, “Oldest parrot ever”: Cacatua leadbeateri, 30 June 1933 – 27 Aug 2016.Winged toolmakers
Goffin’s cockatoos solve problems that take primates years of practice. At the Messerli Institute in Vienna, three of them pushed a ball into the right hole with a stick — each bird invented its own grip, and one managed it on the first attempt.
Meet Ranki → Osuna Mascaró, Mundry, Tebbich, Beck & Auersperg, Scientific Reports (2022), Messerli Institute, Vetmeduni Vienna.Three islands, nowhere else
Ranki’s species lives wild only on three Indonesian islands: Yamdena, Larat and Selaru. Every parrot has been protected since 1981 — and Ranki’s species one tier above WILD and Skippy, in the strictest category CITES has.
Ranki’s story → CITES Appendix I since 6 June 1981; the whole parrot order in Appendix II. IUCN: Near Threatened.The best sentence
“I am definitely not getting a parrot any time soon.” That is the sentence we most like to hear. An encounter after which somebody buys no parrot has done exactly what it was made for.
Why we do this → First-hand.A parrot beat 21 Harvard students
Griffin, an African grey from Irene Pepperberg’s lab, played the shell game against 21 Harvard undergraduates. On 12 of 14 task types he matched them or did better. Only in the two hardest rounds did the adults clearly win.
How clever they really are → Pailian, Pepperberg, Carey & Halberda, Scientific Reports (2020).