Chemical communication is widely used throughout the animal world including birds (1-3). The skin glands of vertebrates can release chemical signals such as sex pheromones attracting the opposite sex for breeding (1,2,4). But, the uropygial (also called preen or oil) glands of birds have no sex pheromones characterized (2,3,5). Here, we show that females of the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulat...

Vocalisation in songbirds and parrots has become a prominent model system for speech and language in humans. We investigated possible sex differences in behavioural and neural responsiveness to mate calls in the budgerigar, a vocally-learning parrot. Males and females were paired for 5 weeks and then separated, after which we measured vocal responsiveness to playback calls (a call of their mate...

The Congo African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus, PER) is an endemic species of Central Africa, valued for its intelligence and listed as vulnerable due to poaching and habitat destruction. Improved knowledge about the P. erithacus genome is needed to address key biological questions and conservation of this species. The P. erithacus genome was studied using conventional and molecular cytogen...

DESCRIPTION Amedical residentwoke up in the nightwith an intense itch of the left wrist and recovered a tick nearby. The bite mark over 2 days progressed as a long linear erythematous, swollen and tender streak extending up to the axilla along the medial aspect of the upper limb (figures 1 and 2) alongwith a tender axillary lymphadenopathy. A Doppler ultrasound revealed normal venous system wit...

on the part of the professional staff to foster the mystique, even to the extent of keeping the administrative and professional staff apart, as far as possible. The office door was always kept closed. Shortly after I started, the psychiatric social worker left and so, through shortage of staff, the office door had to be opened. I had to adopt duties that I knew little about, with very few guide...

The ability to abstract a regularity that underlies strings of sounds is a core mechanism of the language faculty but might not be specific to language learning or even to humans. It is unclear whether and to what extent nonhuman animals possess the ability to abstract regularities defining the relation among arbitrary auditory items in a string and to generalize this abstraction to strings of ...

BACKGROUND Toxoplasmosis, a worldwide zoonotic disease, is caused by Toxoplasma gondii. The distribution of genetic diversity of T. gondii in wild animals is of great importance to understand the transmission of the parasite in the environment. However, little is known about T. gondii prevalence in wild animals and birds in China. METHODS We conducted the genetic characterization of T. gondii...

Other than humans, extensive vocal learning has only been widely demonstrated in birds. Moreover, there are only a handful of avian species that are known to be good mimics of human speech. One such species is the budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), which is a popular mimic of human speech and learns new vocalizations throughout adult life. Using operant conditioning procedures with a repeati...

The present study describes the pathological and bacteriological findings and diagnosis by immunoperoxidase and immunofluorescence methods in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) naturally infected with Salmonella gallinarum obtained from three commercial budgerigar rearing farms. The course of the disease in young budgerigars was peracute or acute, whereas in adult budgerigars the disease was...

Auditory and vocal regulation of gene expression occurs in separate discrete regions of the songbird brain. Here we demonstrate that regulated gene expression also occurs during vocal communication in a parrot, belonging to an order whose ability to learn vocalizations is thought to have evolved independently of songbirds. Adult male budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) were stimulated to voca...