One of the most fascinating things about parrots are their singing abilities, and they truly enjoy showing off their musical talent. Instagram page the Bird Singalong Project is collecting videos of gifted parrots in one place, and it’s a part of a major research project.
The Bird Singalong Project was launched by researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands, as a part of their efforts to explore parrots’ musicality. Their ability to mimic human speech made them an obvious target for this study, which explores animal cognition and the evolution of language.
“We aim to investigate how well parrots recognize and imitate melodies, and, especially, how flexible they are. We invite bird owners to participate in our World-Wide Bird Singalong Project to discover the musical skills of parrots and other songbirds,” reads the description on Leiden University’s official website.
The team of researchers behind the Bird Singalong Project is trying to figure out if musicality is a uniquely human capacity or something they share with other living creatures. Since parrots are great at imitating sounds and can sing along to all kinds of tunes, they became a subject of this study, which gained thousands of Instagram followers after researchers started posting videos of singing parrots online in an attempt to promote their study.