How do you teach a bird to talk Well, you can talk at the bird, or you can talk to it. Teaching a bird to talk with a tape or CD is essentially talking at the bird.

In the Dark Ages of bird care, just as diets were poor and cages small, the information of teaching birds to talk was scanty and highly inaccurate. The lore of the day was bizarre and often potentially dangerous. A popular myth was that birds couldn't talk until their tongues were split! Some "experts" believed that a parrot learned better if it was put in a dark closet and words were periodically shouted at it.

Birds mimic human voices because they enjoy communicating with their social group. Some species are better mimics than others. Even birds that are not tame have the ability to mimic and talk.