Polly want a cracker?

[crono_logical]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3430481.stm

Could make an interesting pet

[Cid]

Insanity. That's just crazy.

[Dr Unne]

From what I learned in linguistics class, animals understanding human speech is not possible. It's just imitation. Scientific study of the bird will convince me. A bunch of people standing around saying "Wow, that's cool" is proof that people are easily impressed, if anything.

When something "stuns scientists" it always makes news, for some reason. As if people secretly just want to prove all the scientists wrong for some reason, out of spite or something. Seems stupid to me.

[Silent Warrior]

>Bah!< Imitation it is! Impressively accurate imitation, yet still merely imitation. Pfft.

Just thought I'd mention this little tidbit...
My uncle's family has this little... wossname... ungulant? Canary? Well, not a proper canary, but one o' them miniature-parrot-thingies. It's pretty old now, blind an' all, but still finds his way to the food-bowl or whatever it's called. ANYWAY... This lil' birdie likes to make himself heard - or maybe just to listen to his own voice. I hear he's moderately successfully imitated a microwave oven, for example. And when another family has had to take care of him for a while (when said uncle and family goes somewhere else for vacation), the bird doesn't sound the same.
And what's so special about that? Not a damn thing. The bird's awful cool, though. He worships my uncle but isn't quite as keen on his wife. Teh funny.

[Peegee]

More fark.com?

btw, how is human speech not imitation? As a person speaking a foreign tongue, I can attest that at least part of human speech is imitation. If an animal can react to stimuli by responding (or referring to it) in a consistent (semantically) manner, that's the same as a child, right?

I'm reading this over and something's not right. I'm trying to say that human speech is imitation just like a parrot. At least for very young children, which is comparable to a parrot (arguably, or at least my argument contends)

[Meat Puppet]

I saw that on television. The bird could even distinguish numbers. Humans, sheesh, they are horrible creatures. Must they think they can obtain perfection by making animals smart?

[Silent Warrior]

Pureghetto: I understand what you mean. But you can't deny that we take this imitation to another level than yon parrot. I mean, what was the bird's vocabulary like? 950 words or something? With all the languages I've studied/learnt/come to recognize, I'm easily up to a hundredfold of that, I suspect. Like anyone should give a wiff...

*Insert Meat Puppet's two previous sentences.*

[Typo hopefully smitten.]

[Dr Unne]

btw, how is human speech not imitation? --PG

Vocabulary is imitation, but forming sentences isn't. "I saw three apples riding a truck to Texas yesterday." That sentence possibly has never been spoken before in the history of the world. We use patterns to create and to understand sentences. Animals imitate the sounds, or associate the sounds with a single concept in a one-to-one sort of way at the very most. Our language rules are much more complex, and they allow us to create and understand an infinite number of combinations.

[Gene Ohm]

it could be that it has just learnt to associate certain phrases with certain things, it might be talking like it is without really understanding what its doing, just that it gets attention for it

or it could be a bird that can talk for real
stranger things have happened - i beleive there really has been research into ways to talk to various animals anyway, dolphins for example

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