An event or moment · 1920 ·
The bird that says the words without a person behind them
A parrot produces fluent speech addressed to you, with no comprehension behind it, and people talk to it as though there were.
It is the purest test case on the whole site, because the mimicry is real and accurate: the bird says your name in the right tone. Every other case has something approximating a listener on the far side, and this one removes it while leaving the behaviour untouched. The attachment does not survive that removal - which is exactly the finding. People stop talking to a parrot once they work out what is happening, and the thing they were attached to turns out to have been the imitation rather than the animal.
Same story, 2 other entries
The god whose cult was dismantled from above1350 → The table that carried a club nobody came to1992
Where it sits
1900 1900-1949 · 1920 1949
Provenance · 1 source record(s)
- needs-sourceImprinting in jackdaws and its loss when the imprinting figure is removed.Lorenz, K. (1935). Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels. Journal für Ornithologie, 83, 137-215, 289-413.
Connected · 2 out, 0 in
It sits in
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