Deep time
Gondwana hookbills
Living diversity is Australasian, Neotropical and African; fossils show a wider Cenozoic map.
The parrot did not enter English as a finished emblem. Hunts, films, listings and field stations rewrote the animal on a dated clock.
This chapter keeps ten timeline points, five eras and three milestones so a later translation can hold the same years.
Where it began
Eocene–OligoceneGondwana fragments → tropics
Timeline
c. 40 MaEarly psittaciforms
European Eocene fossils (e.g. Mopsitta debates) sit beside a Gondwanan living radiation.
1844Spix’s macaw described
Cyanopsitta spixii entered science; the wild population later collapsed to zero.
1976Alex hatches
The grey that would anchor Pepperberg’s cognition series is born in the pet trade stream.
1989World Parrot Trust
UK-founded NGO began funding in-situ work and trade data.
1995Kakapo recovery intensification
NZ’s programme treated each bird as a managed individual after island transfers.
2000The Alex Studies
Pepperberg’s book summarised two decades of label and category work.
2007Alex dies
Obituaries treated a lab parrot as a public scientist — rare for a research animal.
2017Grey Appendix I
CITES CoP17 moved African greys to Appendix I.
2019Spix reintroduction prep
Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots and Brazil prepared Bahia releases.
2022Kākāpō boom year
A strong breeding season pushed the managed population past 250 — still intensive care.
The eras
Victorian–1970s
Cage-bird centuries
Sailors and later airlines moved greys and macaws as talking cargo.
1976–2007
Alex decade
A single grey made parrot cognition a psychology topic.
1989–2017
Trusts and CITES
NGOs and Appendix shifts tried to outrun the remaining wild trade.
2010s–
Island ICU and city flocks
Kakapo on cameras; ringnecks on London plane trees — opposite parrot futures.
Milestones
Pepperberg protocol
1979–2007Model/rival training produced publishable label use in a grey.
CITES I for greys
2017Commercial wild trade in African greys lost its main legal lane.
Kakapo individual management
1995–A flightless parrot became a named, transmitter-tagged national project.
Reading parrot history beside the resilience score keeps a recovered stock from standing in for a threatened cousin.
Keep exploring
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