How nice that the last thing that happened at that vile campground was a nice thing, an interesting thing: I got to watch the parrot eat. His mouth and foot were so nimble and dextrous!
The upper and lower beaks cracked the peanut shell and then the tongue went inside and dug out the meaty seed.
With equipment like that it is no wonder that parrots became "linguists". But how and why did their brains evolve to take advantage of their physiology? I always run into this sort of quandary when thinking about how animals evolved.
The Wikipedia article didn't help much. It was dry and academic. It is a fairly common occurrence when you get interested in a topic and go somewhere on the internet to learn about it, that you end up reading jargon-filled gibberish.
There may be YouTubes to watch that are more informative than jargon-filled articles. Until then I will content myself with imagining a primeval parrot saying, "Well, now that I have this remarkable tongue, what else can I do with it? Ahah, I've got it. I will recite love sonnets to the female parrots and become biologically successful!"
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