Wild Parrots May Follow Language-Like Rules — Including Syntax
When rival yellow-necked Amazon parrots face off in the treetops of Costa Rica, their exchange can erupt into a volley of rapid, overlapping sounds. The calls overlap, accelerate and become more pronounced as territorial tensions increase. To human ears, it may sound like noisy chaos. But are these bursts of sound improvised or carefully structured?
In a study published in the Journal of Avian Biologybiologist Christine Dahlin discovered that parrots’ rapid “chirp duets” follow syntactic rules — consistent patterns that govern how sounds are organized — as well as pairs of recurring sounds similar to words that often appear together in human speech.
“Ultimately, I really want to understand how these birds communicate in the wild,” Dahlin said in a press release. “I want to know what they say and how they say it.”
Learn more: Whales are capable of establishing complex communications: could humans one day speak with them?
Recording parrot duets in the wild
Yellow-naped Amazon parrots perform coordinated duets, with mated pairs alternating calls in closely synchronized bursts. Dahlin had already studied a simpler version built from just a few call types. Even these exchanges followed clear ordering patterns.
Chirping duets, however, are much more elaborate. They exploit a wider range of sounds and are most often heard during territorial disputes. When rival pairs approach, the shouts become louder and faster, sometimes intensifying just before a fight.
To capture them, Dahlin and his students made repeated trips to Costa Rica over three years, recording parrots on breeding trees with directional microphones. Of hundreds of recordings, about 50 were chirping duets of 13 mated pairs. Although each lasted only five to ten seconds, together they contained more than 450 individual calls.
Language-like patterns in parrots
In the simplest duets, the parrots relied on four main call types. In the tweet exchanges, the team identified at least 36 distinct types – and probably more, which seemed too rare to categorize.
To look for structure, the researchers turned to an unlikely tool: software normally used to analyze literature. Treating calls like words, they looked at how the sounds were arranged.
What they found was evidence of syntax, consistent ordering rules that shaped how calls were combined. The team detected more than 20 syntactic rules governing which sounds could follow others and which sequences tended to occur together.
Additionally, they noted the presence of what linguists call “collocates” – words that frequently travel together. In human language, pairs like “eat” and “food” or “green” and “grass” tend to cluster together.
The parrots showed similar pairings, with particular sounds appearing repeatedly alongside specific others far more often than chance would predict.
And yet, despite these rules, the individual duets contained very little repetition. Birds did not complete memorized strings of notes. Each exchange was varied but still constrained, implying that the parrots made rapid, coordinated decisions in real time.
What Warble Duos Reveal About Animal Communication
The results do not mean that parrots speak in sentences. But they show that their communication follows rules and adapts to the context rather than happening randomly.
Chirping duos appear to play a key role in territorial conflicts. In Dahlin’s recordings, the few physical fights she observed were all preceded by intense vocal exchanges. Duos can help rivals measure each other before a confrontation becomes physical.
Understanding these patterns could reshape how researchers interpret animal communication more broadly.
Dahlin still has years of recordings to analyze, including how different couples react to each other and whether certain vocal patterns escalate or quell an argument. For now, what looks like a noisy squabble in the canopy might instead be a tightly structured exchange.
Learn more: Here’s why words get mixed up when you listen to a foreign language
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