Why Do Parrots Talk? Venezuelan Site Offers Clues

摘要

Back in July 1985, while studying raptors on this working cattle ranch, Steve Beissinger noticed a pair of green-rumped parrotlets nesting in a hollowed-out fence post. "Parrots usually nest high in the treetops, which makes them extremely difficult to study, but these were nesting just a few feet off the ground," recalls Beissinger, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "I immediately wondered, 'Would they nest in artificial boxes?'"