Parrots have different accents and dialects depending on which European city they live in, study suggests

People all over the world have thousands of different accents, which provide clues to where they grew up.

Now, a new study suggests that parrots also squawk in different dialects depending on the city they live in.

Researchers found that the calls of wild monk parakeets, a small species of parrot, vary between European cities.

The team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior analyzed birds in cities in Spain, Belgium, Italy and Greece.

The birds, which are native to South America, are now found in large numbers across Europe as pets escape and breed.

Researchers found that the calls of wild monk parakeets (pictured) vary between European cities (stock image)

They have an exceptionally flexible vocal repertoire and can imitate and learn new sounds throughout their lives.

The study's lead author, PhD student Stephen Tyndel, said: 'Having only recently spread across Europe, monk parakeets are the perfect test tube to study how complex communication evolves in a species other than our own.

'Like humans, monk parakeets in Europe have unique ways of communicating depending on where they live.' The researchers recorded the birds in Athens, Barcelona, ​​Bergamo, Brussels, Legnago, Madrid, Pavia and Verona.

And they found that parrots had different dialects in each city.

Fellow doctoral student Simeon Smeele says: 'Parakeets in Brussels, for example, had contact calls that were very different from those in other cities.

The team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior analyzed birds in cities in Spain, Belgium, Italy and Greece (Stock image of parakeets)

“For the most part, the dialects differed in the frequency modulation structure within each call, which is super hard for humans to hear.” Although the bird's dialects varied from city to city, they remained the same in different parks within the same city.

The team suggested that parrot dialects diverged early on when birds 'invaded' European cities fifty years ago, but did not change significantly afterwards.

“This suggests that dialects were created through a passive process: birds copying birds make small mistakes and therefore cities slowly become different from each other,” Tyndal said.

“Or they were different to begin with, and these differences persisted over time.” The findings were published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.