Can a Alexandrian parrot talk

Parrots and other birds with the necessary physical attributes can imitate human speech. Species which are great talkers include Indian mynahs, lyrebirds and birds of paradise.

But when we refer to them as talkers, we simply mean they can imitate human speech; they cannot hold a conversation with a human because they cannot learn to speak in any human language, which is quite different from learning to make sounds which are very like human speech. We can record human speech, but we can't hold a conversation with the DVD player.

Birds - like many other animals - can, however, learn to communicate with humans by sound, in the same way they communicate with other birds. All birds which depend largely on sound for communication interact this way not only within their own species, but with other species as well, including creatures other than birds.

So, a community of birds living near, say, a particular dog, will respond to the bark they know means the neighbor's cat just climbed over the fence. They'll call to their family, and other birds and small mammals - the cat's prey - will pick up on the warning and call in turn. Eventually, the whole neighborhood knows the cat's on the prowl - apart from most of the humans, who usually don't speak Animal, and have no idea all this communication is going on around them. They might say, though, 'Funny how the birds seem to know the cat's coming before it's even in the yard.'

The cat, on the other hand, eventually becomes well aware of all this talk about it, and learns to be more clever next time: for example, it might try crossing the fence in a corner with heavy shrubbery covering its journey from watchers above and the dog below. Of course, it has to change its strategy frequently to contend with all the gossip going on about its new approach.