First of all, I find that cruelty against animals is an ever-alarming issue. People seem to get sicker every day, otherwise why should they harm innocent, defenseless creatures like parrots, puppies or cats?

This is common especially among teenagers. They probably are at a confusing, troubling age, confronted with a lot of stress caused by their searching for their true identity and the meaning of life, but I personally believe this cannot excuse their nonsense behavior when it comes to microwaving poor parrots or beating cats to death, or burning them alive and such sort of insane gestures.


Yet another example of cruelty was the fact that 36 dogs got disappeared in the state of Idaho, which were later on found dead by being shot. A hypothesis would be that those kids, being abused themselves by adults and therefore having to face their very own demons, cannot act otherwise. Nonetheless, it's such a pity for the poor animals.

But why care for parrots, which are merely birds? Most people consider them not so smart animals, that can get annoyingly communicative, especially when they express themselves by loud noises and screaming to get human attention. Apart from their colorful beauty, one of the main reasons to love parrots is their talking abilities. Even if they do not know how to talk, they still are very vocal by nature, and one may expect a lot of screaming from them, especially if they get bored or lonely.

In order to avoid later abandonment of the bird, or turning it to an animal shelter because it cannot be taught how to speak, one should consider the possibility that the parrot may not talk, ever. They should not be sold or given up simply because they don't learn the human language.

There are a few criteria to be met in order for parrots to be able to learn how to speak. Parrots generally learn to speak either when they are kept with other talking parrots, or with humans only, or if talking is a species' trait. It appears that the commonly-spread little budgies/parakeets are some of the best talkers among parrots. Nonetheless, those budgies which are kept in pairs, or female budgies generally lack the ability to learn how to talk.

The fact is parrots love to communicate, and talking is just one way of transmitting feelings and information for them. In order to succeed in the teaching process, one should try and associate words and phrases with pleasant moments, gestures, events.

Since talking is about communicating things, a parrot can be taught to speak in a similar way a kid is being taught. Kids learn words that grown-ups say in relation to their momentary actions. Children retain those words because they see their connection with things that are happening in the world at that particular instant. Kids can also relate words with emotions, for instance when they are being kissed or hugged, in association with words like "I love you". So the very best way to teach a parrot to talk is to use the same words with the same activities repeatedly.

Birds, but also most pets learn to remember their very own name first. This is because they associate their names with their owners' calling them to feed them, of their coming home from work, or to their owners' petting them, giving them time, attention, affection, playing with them.

So if you want to teach your parrot to talk, try and speak to them while giving them treats, cleaning their place, walking into the room or getting out of the room. The idea is to associate each gesture or activity with a certain word or phrase. Parrots will then start uttering those words anytime they see you doing all those things for them, or perhaps when they want something to be done for them.

Just like the famous "Polly wants a cracker!", which gave the name of a famous Nirvana song, parrots can learn to express their needs, their joy or annoyance. And by teaching a parrot to speak, living with such a pet in the house can get more and more fun.

Fun indeed especially if you don’t care much if there is silence around, because with a parrot in the house … you can kiss silence good bye!