Deep time
Gondwana hookbills
Living diversity is Australasian, Neotropical and African; fossils show a wider Cenozoic map.
Milestones in order. This is history, not a weekly activity grid.
- Early psittaciforms
- Spix’s macaw described
- Alex hatches
- World Parrot Trust
- Kakapo recovery intensification
- The Alex Studies
- Alex dies
- Grey Appendix I
- Spix reintroduction prep
- Kākāpō boom year
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed51
Intelligence87
Range52
Resilience46
Cultural impact58
Ecological role52
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Did Alex the parrot really use words as labels?
Irene Pepperberg’s papers treated English tokens as categories, not circus tricks. Alex (1976–2007) identified colours, shapes and same/different above chance. The debate is about the ceiling, not whether the tasks happened.
Why did African greys move to CITES Appendix I in 2017?
Wild capture for pets plus forest loss cut Psittacus erithacus. Appendix I ended most commercial international trade in wild greys.
What is the kakapo recovery model?
Every Strigops is named and managed on predator-free New Zealand islands. Supplementary feeding and nest cameras make it closer to intensive care than to a hands-off reserve.
Are London’s ring-necked parakeets a conservation win?
They are an introduced boom, not a restored native. Cavity competition with starlings and bats is the local argument.
Why do so many macaws remain threatened?
Cavity trees come down with forest. The pet trade added a second cut. Spix’s macaw went extinct in the wild before a 2019–20s reintroduction attempt in Bahia.
Do parrots “talk” in the wild?
They learn contact calls in flocks. Human-word mimicry is the lab and living-room version of a general vocal-learning kit shared with songbirds and hummingbirds.
The parrot did not enter English as a finished emblem. Hunts, films, listings and field stations rewrote the animal on a dated clock.
This chapter keeps ten timeline points, five eras and three milestones so a later translation can hold the same years.
Where it began
Eocene–OligoceneGondwana fragments → tropics
Timeline
c. 40 MaEarly psittaciforms
European Eocene fossils (e.g. Mopsitta debates) sit beside a Gondwanan living radiation.
1844Spix’s macaw described
Cyanopsitta spixii entered science; the wild population later collapsed to zero.
1976Alex hatches
The grey that would anchor Pepperberg’s cognition series is born in the pet trade stream.
1989World Parrot Trust
UK-founded NGO began funding in-situ work and trade data.
1995Kakapo recovery intensification
NZ’s programme treated each bird as a managed individual after island transfers.
2000The Alex Studies
Pepperberg’s book summarised two decades of label and category work.
2007Alex dies
Obituaries treated a lab parrot as a public scientist — rare for a research animal.
2017Grey Appendix I
CITES CoP17 moved African greys to Appendix I.
2019Spix reintroduction prep
Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots and Brazil prepared Bahia releases.
2022Kākāpō boom year
A strong breeding season pushed the managed population past 250 — still intensive care.
The eras
Victorian–1970s
Cage-bird centuries
Sailors and later airlines moved greys and macaws as talking cargo.
1976–2007
Alex decade
A single grey made parrot cognition a psychology topic.
1989–2017
Trusts and CITES
NGOs and Appendix shifts tried to outrun the remaining wild trade.
2010s–
Island ICU and city flocks
Kakapo on cameras; ringnecks on London plane trees — opposite parrot futures.
Milestones
Pepperberg protocol
1979–2007Model/rival training produced publishable label use in a grey.
CITES I for greys
2017Commercial wild trade in African greys lost its main legal lane.
Kakapo individual management
1995–A flightless parrot became a named, transmitter-tagged national project.
Reading parrot history beside the resilience score keeps a recovered stock from standing in for a threatened cousin.
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