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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Birds in the Funnies- Parrots can smell!?!

Another amusing offering from Monty, this time with the ultimate bachelor Moondog doing some dirty laundry with his pet parrot Pilsner (an excellent name, if I do say so myself.) From an ornithological standpoint, though, I don't think that parrots are one of the few bird groups with an acute sense of smell (like vultures and tubenoses.)

Monty 1/3/07:

1 comment:

birdchick said...

Once I was at a PetSmart doing a raptor program. During a break I was looking at some of the birds they had on sale and one of their "bird experts" came over. He vehemently disagreed that I had told the audience that birds have a poorly developed sense of smell.

He told me that his macaw gets very excited when he's takes food out of the refridgerator and how would the bird know he was doing that unless the bird had a highly developed sense of smell.

I suggested that the bird probably recognized the sound but the employee looked at me like I was crazy.

I know kakapoos are supposed to have a highly developed sense of smell, but they're nocturnal and that makes sense. I don't think other psittaciformes do.