Victor and Ryan Intro

My name is Ryan Reynolds and I have an almost unbelievable parrot story that I would like to share with you. It is about a budgerigar named Victor who was the first parrot in the world to prove beyond a doubt that he could speak in conversational language. Victor was only about 8 weeks old when I brought him home from the pet shop.  From the beginning he was an extraordinary learner. He could say the alphabet all the way through and repeat many nursery rhymes and verses at less than one year old. Towards two years, his talking capabilities were so good, I started a website and began posting his recordings. After a while I noticed that he was not just mimicking, but was responding intelligently and talking in context.

Late in 2000 I began to keep a weekly journal which updated people who came to his site on his progress. I wanted to prove to the world that parrots could communicate intelligently. I believed Victor's recordings would do that. Due to the time I spent trying to understand him better, and his willingness to learn and be recorded, his communication developed at an extremely fast pace. He proved that he could not only talk in context but was talented in other areas as well. Sadly, Victor became ill and died in March of 2001. After his death I spent many hours analyzing his remaining recordings and improving the translations in the hope that the scientific community will not ignore this case study and recognize it as valuable research.

Some people may not believe this is possible so I have presented this information in the most reliable way I know; audio and video. Victor's sites consist of many pages of captioned recordings and videos. Each one of his recordings has something different in it to discover about parrot intelligence. After Victor died, I was guardian to another budgie named Maylor who also demonstrated similar aptitudes for using context.

Most people find Victor's recordings easier to understand as they adapt to his budgie accent. Budgies are not like most parrots. They seldom sound like their trainers. They can talk exceptionally fast and their voices are so weak they normally have to be made louder through recordings and analyzed that way. When you are listening to the recordings you may have to play them several times, section by section to understand them. If you really want to know if animals can be as intelligent as humans, please spend some time going through the recordings so you can adapt to Victor's accent. I am sure if you do that you will discover something quite incredible. Thank you for visiting his site and I hope you enjoy it.

Ryan Reynolds

Copyright © April, 2001, 2002 Ryan Reynolds