Meet Sonic: a pale-blue parrot with a prehistoric pedigree and a surprisingly dangerous temper.
Sonic is affectionate, intelligent and generally a delight to have around. She loves a cuddle, has a surprisingly good vocabulary and, for the most part, is a rather chilled-out little companion.
Until she isn’t.
Because Sonic also has a remarkable ability to transform a perfectly pleasant fuss into an assault on my fingers in the blink of an eye.
You might put that down to her being a Quaker parrot. They’re famously opinionated little creatures.
But perhaps there’s another explanation.
You see, Sonic is a dinosaur.
And her family tree includes some rather notorious characters.
Birds aren’t simply descended from dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs, the only surviving branch of a family tree that once included Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor.
And here’s something rather extraordinary.
Stegosaurus lived around 150 million years ago. T. rex appeared roughly 68 million years ago, meaning Stegosaurus had already been extinct for around 80 million years before T. rex arrived.
In fact, Sonic is more closely related to T. rex than T. rex was to Stegosaurus.
That’s because Sonic and T. rex belong to the theropod dinosaurs, whereas Stegosaurus occupied a much more distant branch of the evolutionary tree.
But Sonic has an even closer prehistoric cousin.
Velociraptor.
Forget the enormous, scaly monsters stalking kitchens in Jurassic Park. The real Velociraptor was considerably smaller, feathered, and rather more birdlike than Hollywood would have us believe.
It also possessed a particularly nasty curved claw on each foot.
Sonic doesn’t have one of those, thankfully. Although her beak is quite capable of making its displeasure known.
So Sonic’s ancestry stretches from feathered dinosaurs, through ancient bird lineages, to the parrots we recognise today.
Quite a family history for something that spends much of her time demanding attention.
There’s a famous moment in Jurassic Park when Robert Muldoon realises he’s been outsmarted by a Velociraptor.
“Clever girl.”
It’s a phrase that suits Sonic rather well.
She’s remarkably intelligent, affectionate towards me, and generally happy to socialise with other people, provided they understand that handling her is strictly by invitation.
She’s also an accomplished talker, although she tends to reserve her vocabulary for when she’s in her cage and wants attention.
Why waste words on someone who’s already doing what you want?
And then there’s the social side of her species.
Quaker parrots are unusual even among parrots. In the wild, they construct enormous communal nests from sticks, with multiple pairs occupying separate chambers in what are effectively miniature apartment blocks.
They maintain these structures together, live in bustling colonies and form complex social relationships.
Which brings me back to those Velociraptors.
In Jurassic Park, they’re portrayed as intelligent pack hunters, capable of coordinating their attacks.
There’s no convincing evidence that real Velociraptors hunted that way.
But Quakers are certainly capable of cooperation.
So perhaps the idea of Sonic organising an ambush isn’t quite as far-fetched as it sounds.
Give her a few accomplices and I suspect my fingers would be in considerable danger.
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth, bringing an end to the age of the great non-avian dinosaurs.
But the dinosaurs didn’t all disappear.
One lineage survived, evolved and diversified into the thousands of bird species sharing our planet today.
They’re the robins singing in our gardens, the pigeons wandering around our towns and the seagulls stealing our chips.
And, in my case, a small pale-blue parrot who is simultaneously one of the most affectionate creatures I’ve ever known and occasionally a tiny feathered menace.
She’s a distant cousin of T. rex, a closer relative of Velociraptor, and living proof that the dinosaurs never truly went away.
Her name is Sonic.
And if she decides she’s had enough cuddles, I strongly recommend keeping your fingers out of the way.
Clever girl indeed!
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