5 Interesting Facts About Parrots

#1 – Parrots Can Live Over 100 Years

Believe it or not, that is actually a fact! While it’s not common, some parrot species are known to live past 100 years!

Former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a known collector of animals. Animals ranging from exotic tigers to regular cats and dogs. One of which was a blue and gold macaw named Charlie. Also know as Charlie the Curser. If the numbers are accurate and the story is true, Charlie would be around 115 years old! Now that’s one old bird!

Other species such as the Amazon Parrot also have a long life expectancy. These birds typically live to be around 35 – 50 years but when in captivity can live up to 80 years since they aren’t flying around evading predators and searching for food.

It’s not common for the birds to be passed to younger generations because they live so long. Owning one of these fascinating birds will truly be a life long commitment.

#2 Parrots Are he Only Bird That Can Mimic Human Speech

Parrots love to mimic speech and are the only bird capable of doing so.

African Gray Parrots are one of the most accomplished speakers out of any parrot species. Capable of learning a vocabulary of 300 – 1000. Although these impressive birds can learn more words than an average 10 year old, the record for most words spoken / learned belongs to a little budgerigar named “Puck”.

Puck knew an estimated 1728 words before he passed away in 1994 and still to this day hold the record. So next time someone calls you “Bird-Brain” you should take it as a compliment.

#3 Not All Parrots Can Fly

A parrot that doesn’t fly? Huh?

The Kakapo is a heavy, flightless parrot native to New Zealand. These birds get around by jogging, climbing and hopping around. Their wings are only used for Balancing itself or breaking a fall.

Two reason why the bird might not be able to fly is because it is the heaviest parrot species in the world. males weighing on average 2kg (4.4lbs) and females weighing 1.5kg (3.3lbs). The other reason is because they lost the ability to fly over thousand of years of evolving without having to deal with predators.

Sadly the Kakapo are highly endangered with only 147 left in the world. Thankfully they reside on four different predator free islands.