Parrots are a bird that everyone has heard about. But a bird that I think is overlooked for its amazing ability to repeat back the sound waves it hears. It has a talent that is not to be matched by any other living organism we know about. And the science behind how this bird, with a brain much smaller than ours, can pull off this amazing feature.

We can thank evolution for this being possible. Scientists acknowledge that the parrot is one of the most understudied field. We are still trying to  find out new things about the parrot and how it brains allows it to perform its purpose in nature .

The evolution of the parrot can date all the way back to 29 million years ago. Obviously 29 million years ago there wasn’t a bird that looked or acted like the bird we see today. But we can see the shell of its skull has evolved and has been around for quite some time. And what is inside the brain is what makes this bird special.

Evolution a big overlook of thousands of years of natural selection. Where the one that is rightly fit to survive in its environment will survive. Which is what makes these species unique. We see tons of animals in the same animal family that are different due to natural selection. And this bird and how its brain evolved is the best example to show this method. Scientists say the reason their brain survived and grew under revolution is because it allows the birds to communicate in the wild with each other by repeating each other for mating reasons, to mark territory, and pass along alarms between each other.

The most recent explanation from scientists on how these birds did this through evolution is by the split of its brain into duplicates of itself. Their “song nuclei “in their brain is the name for the part of the brain in the mimic bird. The parts in this brain has neurons that are inter dependent that allows them to learn quickly, process, and then mimic the sound that it hears. But the exact area in the brain that this process happens is still remained a mystery under scientific research. We see differences in the brain but it is still not confirmed how it works. But what scientists have noticed that there is a gene that is found often in songbirds that is found in the splitting of the brain.

Parrots have a similar brain and gene structure, called the “core”,to the hummingbird, but the “shell” of the parrot is unique. I hope through technology in the future we will be able to find more out about these birds, and how the flow of their special brain they contain. In a couple of months from now we will find out something significant things about how the brain works in this bird, as some scientific research is being more intensely studied to find out about a bird everyone assumes they know, but no one knows about it and how it performs.