Cockatoo imitates a (formerly) married couple arguing

February 5, 2015 • 3:40 pm

All I know about this is come from the notes accompanying the YouTube video, but given what you see, the description rings true:

Cockatoo Imitates Couple Arguing
Peaches was owned by a couple that eventually got a divorce and of course, I’m sure there was a few disagreements. Peaches now mimics a couple arguing, even aggressively moving her head as if pointing to the one she is arguing with.

51 thoughts on “Cockatoo imitates a (formerly) married couple arguing”

    1. “Simultaneously all three went for the ball, and the coconut-like sound of their heads colliding secretly delighted the bird.”

      1. I’ve had that one up in. Y kitchen for decades. Love it!!

        A fair # of F bombs dropped in this exchange. The bird’s got both voices down…

  7. We once had a Major Mitchell Cocatoo, like the one in the video, called Lady McBeth. She never learned to speak, let alone argue.

  9. This video, especially the first third, elicited gales of laughter from me; the latter parts just sound like unintelligible squawking. A friend to whom I recommended it found it sad. Interesting dichotomy.

    2. “to whom I recommended it found it sad. ”

      I found it sad, too. The pain that married couples willingly inflict on each other. So many people just don’t know how to handle conflict resolution.

      1. Yeah but the cockatoo doesn’t know that. So it isn’t sad for the cockatoo. It may (note I said ‘may’) have found the couples’ arguments quite entertaining.

        1. Actually I think the cockatoo looks stressed and it seems to have pulled out a fair amount of its feathers?

          1. Yes. Cockatoos don’t pull out their feathers because they are happy. And cockatoo is smart enough to perceive- and react to- stress and discord in the household.

  10. The cockatoo in the video may be suffering from
    Psittacine beak and feather disease     , although the feather-loss does not seem to be uniform across its whole body. Perhaps its partial nudity is due “merely” to feather-picking.

    Judging by the colours in its crest, it is possibly a Major Mitchell cockatoo, but hard to tell in the absence of pinkish belly feathers.

    My own Sulphur Crested Cockatoo is 46 years old. This morning Cocky and I went for walk, and he decided to fly home, a distance of only about 500 metres. There is something rather glorious about having a bird that has its freedom but chooses to stay around. Makes me feel I am privileged.

    I have owned Cocky for only a year. He had turned rather vicious while with his former/first owner and was dangerous to his children, but after a year of constant attention by my partner and daughter and myself, he has learned that biting brings no reward, and indeed will bring some discomfort in the form of a bucket of water. All of us sported open wounds at times, and mrs grasshopper once required medical attention after Cocky bit through the ball of her thumb.

    Now, though, he is a gentle and loving bird.

    A really weird thing about a domesticated cocky is that it prefers to walk rather than to fly. My previous cocky was the same, and two or three other cockies I have known did the same. They also prefer to scale an obstacle than to fly over it. Cocky will regularly walk 100 metres to the wood pile and spend hours turning logs into woodchips.

    We rarely lock him up, except when we will be away from the house for a while.

    Cocky barks like a dog, imitates a chicken that has just laid an egg, knows some English words too, and his previous owner obviously for years would greet him with “Cocky want to get out?”. That is a phrase that Cocky now uses whenever he finds himself on the wrong side of a door. Also it can be rather disconcerting when you are engaged in some manual task and Cocky comes up behind you and says most appositely “What are you doing?”, rather than “Hello”, or “Give us a kiss”.

    We also have a Rainbow Lorikeet who flies around the neighbourhood, but that is another story

    2. I would imagine that if your cockatoo is given free rein most of the time, there must be bird droppings throughout the house. How do you manage?

      1. Luckily, cockatoo poo is easily mopped up, and they are not an indefatiguable defecator in any case. And as he prefers to be upon the floor there is no real problem with his droppings on the furniture. 🙂

    3. I was thinking that the above bird had feather loss due to pulling out its feathers, perhaps due to stress.
      Being with a bird that has loud arguments with itself would be difficult.

    4. Yes I noticed the feather loss too. Glad you had the patience to work with your bird. He is lucky to have found you.

    5. There is a lovely sequence in Konrad Lorenz’s book King Solomon’s Ring in which he talks about his cockatoo which is also free flying. On one occasion the cockatoo flies into a room where Lorenz’s elderly mother and her genteel friends are enjoying a tea-party. The bird is spooked by the strangers around the table and slams on the air brakes and – before retreating in panic – momentarily hovers over the sugar bowl, wafting the icing sugar all over the equally startled guests.

  11. Wait, I thought that was what all married couples sound like? After children…of course. 🙂

    1. Maybe. But we have 3 and none of us ever fight. ‘Mom’ tells us what to do, and we do it. 3 little words: ‘she. feeds. us’.

  12. Blush. Now I know how I used to sound when we used to argue and fight. :0
    Actually, it’s very sad. This parrot should have been brought along to couples counselling, to give the therapist the low-down on what was happening at home.
    And I assume that the parrot (the wife) was cussing out the husband at the beginning, and at the end when the parrot turned her back and started to mutter and grumble, that’d be what the husband did (and many other husbands have done).

  14. That is one sad and neurotic-looking cockatoo.

    🙁

    If you need cheering up (I did), watch the Conan video with the black palm cockatoo and Nile crocodile.

  15. I couldn’t make out what the cockatoo was saying but the tone and the body language disturbed me. I had to stop playing it. I have too much empathy and it puts me in an angry mood.

  17. Last time I was at Auckland Zoo there was an open enclosure with a label that said ‘Sulphur Crested Cockatoo’ and there was the cockatoo, sitting on a tree branch, not restrained or captive in any way. (No it wasn’t nailed down like the famous Norwegian Blue…)

    I was quite bemused that the cockatoo would stay there so reliably.

    2. If you ever get the chance to go to Australia you get the opportunity to see these fantastic birds, wild, in large flocks flying about the countryside – a truly wonderful sight! Australia has a fantastic diversity of parrots so as well as the sulphur crested cockatoos there are dozens of other species, large and small, (but all spectacular) to be seen.

  18. For some light relief after that see youtube footage of Snowball the dancing sulphur crested cockatoo.

  19. As someone who is from what is euphemistically called a “broken home” (as in 5 fathers and 3 mothers,
    and living in alcoholic ridden slums part of the time) I found this to be too disturbing for me to relive again (I could not watch all of it). That cockatoo appears to have suffered a great deal from a rather bad environment as well.

        1. It’s a musk gland, known as a chin gland (or gular gland, or throat gland, or mandibular gland), which secretes pheromones associated with dominance in male crocodilians. Apparently it carries information on the size and putative ferocity of the secretor. Females also use the secretions to mark their nests.

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