When you think of talking birds, you immediately think about parrots and proud parrot owners showing you the many words their birds know. What you might not know is that there are other species as birds that can also talk, and pretty decently actually.
This article should open your eyes when it comes to crows and their ability to talk, so be sure to read it in full if this subject seems interesting enough.
So can Crows Talk?
It might surprise you to find out that crows are able to talk, and they will say quite a few words. These birds are able to use their syrinx to somewhat mimic words through sounds that they hear, just like parrots do. They might associate certain sounds with their basic meaning based on how people react to them, even though they won’t understand exactly what each word means, and will then repeat the sounds to catch the attention of those people.
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This means that in time, you might be able to train your crow to know that certain sounds will bring it certain types of food and you might even be able to make the bird respond to a good night and good morning.
Crows, although very smart, aren’t used to being trained by people and this means that it will take a considerable amount of time and will prove to be quite difficult to train the crow these kinds of sound tricks.
Why have you never seen a talking crow?
The answer to this question is very simple: crows aren’t used to living very close to humans and they are almost never kept as pets.
Considering that most encounters you will have with crows will be in the wild, in plain nature where they have no need to talk to humans, they will have no reason to learn how to mimic common human words.
However, the very few crow owners will tell you that when kept in captivity, this bird will learn to mimic a lot of words and can even do this as great as a parrot would. Not only crows raised as pets, but also Zoo and circus crows are known to mimic human speech and talk to themselves from time to time.
If you still don’t believe me, check out the talking bird in the video below
How can you train a crow to speak?
You will only have a chance of teaching a crow a few words if you either keep it as a pet or you interact with it daily for a longer period of time. Don’t expect a bird you’ve just met to repeat something you say to it.
You should start as simple as possible, with short words that you repeat very often around the crow to make it try to mimic them. When at some point the bird will try to make sounds that are similar to those words, reward it with a small treat and give it praises and affection when you see it trying its best.
A crow is also more likely to remember things at a younger age, which means that the sooner you start the training, the higher the chances will be of getting it to speak.
One of the most important aspects will be to make the bird trust you enough and have a strong connection with it. You can only build trust with a wild creature by spending enough time with them and taking care of them.
It will basically be impossible for you to teach a bird anything, especially something as hard as talking, if it doesn’t trust you.
Conclusion
Although very unbelievable, crows are birds that are able to mimic words and learn to talk to humans just like parrots. This might seem strange to you because it isn’t as common as seeing a parrot talk but if you think about it, it’s basically the same thing: a talking bird, and it’s amazing.
The reason why you’ll see talking crows less often is because they aren’t commonly seen around people and they are very rarely held as pets.
