Parrots have been around for 40 million years. As far as parrot-human interaction, it's been about 130,000 years ago.
Unlike cats and dogs, the parrot has never been successfully breed to fully remove its wild nature. That's what Joanna Burger found out when she "adopted" an adult Red-lored Amazon Parrot named Tiko. The Parrot Who Owns Me (636.6 BUR) is Burger's story of her relationship with Tiko.
Because Tiko is the sole parrot in the household, he performed the mating ritual on Joanna, even going so far as to building artificial nests to woo her. Burger expands on the mating behaviors of parrots in the wild. They are monogamous, mating for life just like geese, herons, and most seabirds. Biologists have even seen same sex pairing occur with parrots - and the bond between two males can be so strong that when a female is introduced, she is shunned.
Joanna Burger is a professor of biology at Rutgers University.
c Waterloo Public Library 2008
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