Study documents for the first time differences in parrot dialects across their European range

In the 50 years since the northern parrot arrived in Europe and spread across the continent, the species has developed a unique dialect that varies from country to country and city, according to a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and Evolutionary Anthropology in Konstanz. It is said that he has let it happen. Leipzig, Germany.

Using a new analysis method, scientists compared the calls of the parrots in eight cities in four European countries and found that the parrots had different ‘calls’ in each city.The work is published in a diary behavioral ecology.

“Like humans, European false parakeets have unique ways of communicating depending on where they live,” says lead author Stephen Tindel, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior.

There are no native parrot species in Europe. However, some species, including the northern parrot, established populations after individuals escaped from the pet trade. False parakeets are originally from South America and now live in large numbers in several European countries.

Like all parrots, the northern parrot has a very flexible vocal repertoire and is able to imitate and learn new sounds throughout its life. Since non-native parrots have only recently spread to Europe, “false parakeets are the perfect test tube to study how complex communication evolves in species other than our own.” says Tindell.

To find out whether European parrots have developed dialects, or different calls depending on where they live, researchers recorded parrots in eight cities in Spain, Belgium, Italy, and Greece. New statistical methods allowed us to test whether parrot calls differ from city to city, and whether they differ between parks within the same city. “We wanted to know not only whether there are different dialects, but at what geographic scales they exist,” Tindell says.

city-specific dialect

They discovered that parrots have different dialects in different cities. For example, parakeets in Brussels made contact calls that were particularly different from those in other cities, said co-lead author Simeon Smeele, an affiliated scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He states:

In most cases, dialects have different frequency modulation structures within each call, “which is very difficult for humans to hear,” Smere added.

But when scientists looked at the dialects within each city’s parks, they found no differences. Parrots did not have unique calls for each park. “Taken together, this suggests that parrot dialects separated early in the bird’s invasion of European cities, but that there were no further changes over this period,” Tindell said. .

The results were surprising, Tindell says. “This suggests that dialects arose through a passive process, meaning that cities gradually become different from each other because birds imitating birds make small mistakes. Or, alternatively, they differ from each other from the beginning. This suggests that these differences were maintained over time.

However, the researchers do not rule out the possibility that dialects are formed by active processes that may help birds communicate socially, such as recognizing group members. In the park, parrots live in dense nests. Researchers suspect that these small social units may have differences in speech, such as slang.

“We think dialects can be used to communicate who is part of which nested clusters, like a password,” Smere says. In the future, the researchers plan to investigate how individuals learn from each other and whether small groups exhibit dialects within the park.

“This will deepen our understanding of parrot communication and provide insight into how complex communication is linked to the complex social lives of humans and animals,” Tindell said.