Chief

Chief is an African Gray Parrot who joined Wildworks in September 2020. African Grey Parrots are well known for their ability to mimic human speech and a variety of sounds. They mimic whistles, technology tones, other animals, and just about any noise they hear. Recently, studies have found their intelligence to extend beyond mimicry. African Greys that have been studied in a research setting have exhibited an ability to comprehend and discriminate between colors, numbers, and shapes. They have also shown they are able to use language purposefully in order to provide the correct word in response to particular questions.

Chief was very quiet when he first came to us at less than a year of age. Overtime he began developing his mimicry skills. He started with whistles and sounds of the other animals. This included what we refer to as dogs barking in the distance in which he mimicked the dogs barks as they sounded when they were far away. Not long after that he picked up the Mountain Lions call.

His mimicry sounds now include words and phrases such as: Mollie, Good Boy Chief, Chiefy, Hi, and a few rambled sentences that are hard to decipher. He particularly loves to mimic the sounds of cell phones ringing or text tones. scuss the requirements of having a parrot for a pet. Did you know on average an African Gray can live up to 50 years? Chief also gives an up close encounter with an important species from his ecosystem. The job of a parrot is to farm their habitat by eating nuts and seeds which are fertilized when passed through the parrot digestive tract, then dispersed by the birds through flight.