The grey parrot (<i>Psittacus erithacus</i>) as musician: an experiment with the Temperate Scale

Abstract

Abstract It has been recently proposed that music should be regarded as a nonverbal form of communication. In addition, it has also been underscored that some animals can innately master a musical code. In this study we submitted sound frequencies corresponding to musical notes in the Temperate Scale to a young female grey parrot by means of the model/rival approach. The results obtained show that there was no latency in eliciting answers, that the parrot sung in reply a musical repertoire significantly larger than the stimuli played. The note frequencies preferred by the parrot, that she never heard before, ranged from the sixth to the seventh octave and were significantly different from the notes played during the experiment that ranged from the fourth to the fifth octave. All the notes in the parrot's sequences were significantly dependent on the previous one. Therefore, our parrot demonstrated a complex cognitive competence in understanding both the similarities and dissimilarities among the frequencies and was able to master the musical code. Keywords: grey parrotanimal cognitionmusicdiscriminationcategorizationsoundscape