Minerva, a long haired black feline, won on the mysteriously laconic slogan, “CRIME.”
Happy Meowscular Monday! As Little Buddy the Cat says, Monday’s a good day to get ripped with intense exercises like slapping treats out of puzzle feeders and moving from one nap spot to another.
The election started as a joke but the idea caught on, the media noticed, and soon people around the world were reading about the race between about 50 pets.
Most candidates were cats, but a few neighbors entered dogs, a parrot and a guinea pig.
It’s not clear if the new feline mayor was promising to end it, address it or solicit more of it, but the slogan resonated with voters and Minerva surged ahead of the pack, defeating incumbent mayor Berry the cat and original challenger Orange Cat.
People who live in the area said the election helped make the neighborhood friendlier, fostering connections between humans and pets. We can’t wait to see what Minerva does with crime.
Requirements for adopting Pepper included a sense of humor and experience caring for birds. He’s now found a home with patient caretakers and another mercurial parrot to hang out with.
It’s too bad cats can’t swear.
While kittens don’t often have problems finding homes due to their overwhelming cuteness and antics, it usually takes a sad story to drum up considerable interest when an adult feline is up for adoption.
As the SPCA of Niagara learned, talkative parrots, especially birds who can swear up a storm, have their pick of homes.
In June, a potty-mouthed parrot named Pepper was surrendered to the shelter, and when the SPCA put the call out — specifying they’d prefer someone with experience caring for birds and a sense of humor — the applications kept rolling in, totaling more than 400.
“His famous line is ‘Do you want me to kick your ass?'” a shelter employee said in an interview last month shortly after announcing Pepper was up for adoption.
Shelter staff asked applicants to include photos of their bird enclosures in addition to the usual pre-adoption questions, eventually narrowing the Pepper Sweepstakes down to 10 potential homes.
This past week, Pepper was finally taken to his new abode in Olean, a small city in western New York. The couple who adopted him are not only experienced with birds, they know all about avian vulgarity. They have a parrot named Shelby who apparently “makes Pepper look like a saint.”
As for Pepper, it looks like he’s getting his bearings before heaping abuse on his new caretakers.
“He hasn’t cursed at them yet, but we know it’s coming,” shelter staff wrote in an update.
In recent decades, research has shown birds can be exceptionally intelligent. Crows, for example, use tools, can differentiate between human faces, and remember which humans have wronged them or treated them well.
While many people assumed parrots merely imitate human language, long term behavioral studies show the birds are able to use words in context and invent novel combinations of words. As with other animals, syntax remains elusive.
The most famous example was Alex the African Gray, who was the subject of research by animal cognition expert Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Alex, who died in 2007 at the age of 31, was able to count and could perform simple calculations. He was talkative, conversant and often told his caretakers how he was feeling, what he wanted, and what he thought of the tests they’d give him. (Like a child, Alex would try to get out of exercises he was bored with by asking for water, saying he was tired and wanted a nap, or just flubbing his answers.)
We are not above crude humor here at PITB, and in the past we’ve written about Ruby, our favorite talking parrot. Ruby lives in the UK with her owner, Nick Chapman, and the pair were among the very earliest Youtube stars thanks to videos of Ruby’s shockingly vulgar, extremely British tirades and Chapman’s infectious laugh.
Warning for those who are offended by bad language or are viewing at work: Ruby is known for liberal use of c-bombs-, t-bombs, f-bombs and just about every other linguistic bomb you can think of, in addition to British slang like “bollocks.” If that’s a problem for you, skip this video.
Eric the Legend, a parrot who lives in Australia, is also a favorite on Youtube for his habit of declaring himself “a fookin’ legend!“
We’re glad Pepper has found a home where his idiosyncratic nature will be cherished, and we hope the future will bring videos of Pepper and Shelby going back and forth. Parrots are social animals, after all, and what fun are insults if you’ve got no one to trade them with?
The last few decades have revealed birds like crows and parrots possess astonishing intelligence. “Bird brain” might not be much of an insult after all.
Meet Kiki the cockatiel, a bird who loves Earth, Wind and Fire so much that he sings the band’s classic hit, September, regularly — whether he’s just chilling by himself, singing along to the recording or driving his human crazy by whistling the catchy hook at ungodly hours.
“Kiki, it’s seven in the morning!” she tells him in one clip, raising an admonishing finger. “Silence!”
I’ve always thought parrots are a fascinating example of animal cognition and further proof that we share our planet with billions of other minds who think and feel.
Humans and birds last shared a common ancestor more than 300 million years ago. That means between them there’s been more than 600 million years of divergent evolution resulting in radically different physiology, abilities and minds.
Yet parrots can speak while non-human primates (apes and monkeys) cannot!
For decades scientists thought apes and monkeys, by virtue of their relative similarity to humans, possessed an inmate affinity for language and that the physical limits of their vocal apparatus is what keeps them from speaking.
But a 2016 study by a team from Princeton University found monkeys do possess the vocal “hardware” to speak, meaning their mouths and throats are capable of making the sounds necessary for human language. It’s the lack of associated brain circuitry that prevents them from talking.
If the ability to speak and the ability to dance/appreciate music and rhythm is uniquely human among the primate order, and birds arrived at it at a different point in their evolutionary history, that means language and appreciation for music/rhythm developed separately along two divergent evolutionary lines!
That’s incredible and has intriguing implications for the cognitive abilities of animals.
A common argument is that birds with the ability to form human speech are simply mimicking sounds and don’t understand what they’re saying. That’s a natural assumption given what we think we know about non-human capacity for understanding language, but research suggests it’s wrong.
Take a look at this video of the famous late African grey parrot, Alex:
When Dr. Irene Pepperberg asks Alex how many blue blocks are present on a tray with a random assortment of blocks, balls and triangular toys in different colors, Alex can’t give a rote answer. First he has to understand that a question is a request for information and not part of the strange human ritual called small talk. He can’t simply count or guess at the number of blocks either.
Instead, Alex has to perform two calculations. He must tally the blue objects and count the number of them that are blocks, or he’s got to count the number of blocks and figure out how many of them are blue.
If he was simply repeating information in context — like saying “Hello!” when a person walks into a room — Alex wouldn’t be able to correctly answer the questions, and Pepperberg’s research funding would have dried up. Instead, Alex became a focal point of research that persisted for decades.
There’s no indication Alex could master syntax, which has proven elusive for even the smartest animals. But the African grey, who died in 2007 at 31 years old, was curious, asking questions that were unique and unexpected of an animal. He once asked his caretakers to describe his physical appearance, and the night before he died, he told Pepperberg: “You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow.”
We’ve talked about parrots before on PITB, including Snowball the dancing cockatiel who not only appreciates music and has a great sense of rhythm, but also has an entire repertoire of unique dance moves. Then there’s my personal favorite, Ruby the African grey, who has demonstrated mastery of absolutely vile, uniquely British insults.
Sure, there may not be much research value in hearing Ruby hurl verbal abuse at her very loving human, Nick Chapman, but few things have made me laugh as hard as that extraordinarily foul-mouthed bird. She has to be seen and heard to be believed. (But if you’ve got kids in the room, stick with the wholesome Snowball. He’s got serious moves.)
Scientists credit Snowball with choreographing his own dance routines, with dozens of individual dance moves and combinations, and moves that change depending on the song he’s rocking out to.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to teach a certain feline a few Earth, Wind and Fire songs in the hope that he’ll give up on the screeching meows and use his natural falsetto for a more gentle wake-up experience.
Hey, hey, hey Ba-dee-ya, hey there my Big Buddy Ba-dee-ya, Little Buddy’s hungry! Ba-dee-ya, get your lazy ass up and feeeeeed me!
Pain In The Bud 