Pet Forum / Birds / Parrots / November 2006

Misty often laughs when we play. He likes to swing on his rope gym and
wrestle with my hand  he gets exited and laughs sometimes with a cackle
or some times with "ho ho ho".
He laughs along with tv audience laughter. He seemed to learn his
cackle laughter by himself but I taught him to say "ho ho". He
associates the two kinds of sound and seems to use them appropriately.
He will deliberatly drop stuff from his cage door onto the floor. He
will say "dropped orange" or "dropped cabbage" and then look at me
expecting that I will pick it up. This is clearly amusing to him.
He also likes to tease the cat by calling her by name and meowing at
her. I realise it is easy to anthropomorphize this behavior  but anyone
who lives with a parrot knows that they love to play
with their humans much like small children or dogs. Greys are very
sensitive to human moods
and can have an amazing capacity to associate words with classes of
objects and actions and activities.
I think it best to treat them as small people. They have evolved to see
things in a different way to humans but we have many common points of
reference. If I am reading a paper he has to have his own to "read".
His idea of reading a newspaper is to tear it to small pieces which is
probably more sensible.

Steve n Misty