Comments on: Victor is the best budgie

Victor is the best budgie

leapingsheep — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:54:34 -0800

Meet Victor, a deceased, brilliant parrot whose owner recorded their regular conversations. The bird gives marital advice, demands human intervention to defend his toys, laughs to entertain his human, and much more. Imbedded audio in some links.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:59:35 -0800

A lot of this seems like gibberish to me, but I applaud any animal that can say, "I fart big poopies"

By: notmydesk

notmydesk — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:35:04 -0800

He's resting. Sorry, it kinda had to be done.

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:42:26 -0800

I've read this, and I still think this is totally bogus. He's taught the parrot to mimic human speech and babble, but the degree of anthropomorphism projected onto this parrot by his owner is just incredible: Some selections from this page: Victor imagines hurting Betty in a fight and being judged by his peers in a court of law. A funny recording where Victor imagines God coming for him and Victor is not sure if he wants to go. Victor talks about how learning to understand him is similar to learning Braille and tries to convince other budgies in the world to speak out so people will treat them better. Victor has an argument with Betty about why he talks, God, and being caged by people. Presumably, if Victor had lived a few more months, he'd be discussing the influence of Milton on Blake. I don't think this is a hoax, insofar as I can believe that Ryan (who runs the website) genuinely believes that Victor is expressing himself. If you read the transcripts, it becomes totally obvious that he is projecting his own wishes on this parrot.

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:46:46 -0800

Apparently both the bible and Nostradamus anticipate Victor, the talking parrot: I was just doing some research on Nostradamus because in one of the recordings, a budgie mentioned his name and said that his predictions are all coming true. During this research I was surprised to find this on one of Nostradamus' prediction pages. Several months ago some of the budgies in our group started saying that they could predict earthquakes and warned of a major earthquake catastrophe on the horizon. December 25th, 2004 a major earthquake did hit, killing over a 100,000 people in Asia.

By: leapingsheep

leapingsheep — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:48:39 -0800

It's true, the guy is exaggerating, but still the bird seems to be speaking with understanding.

By: gnutron

gnutron — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:31:01 -0800

apparently, he talks like yoda. i agree that the owner is projecting, but hey, it's still a bird talking in english. i'm not too sure many of us could speak in bird...

By: Item

Item — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:34:52 -0800

the bird seems to be speaking with understanding. The key word there is 'seems'. all that bird understands is birdseed and shitting on newspapers, and his grasp of those subjects is questionable.

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:23:47 -0800

Coloqually speaking, that ain't no parrot! That's a budgie. You crazy Americans.

By: bukvich

bukvich — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:37:03 -0800

parrots can do advanced mathematics Ravens also have phenomenally high IQ's by the standard of human beings.

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:53:46 -0800

As a parody, we might imagine what might future conversations will have sounded like: Victor: tree low ??? went psss bad want ??? say ??? Owner: Victor is here reflecting on the declining tree population of the Amazonian rainforests, and conjures a nightmarish vision of a world without trees, in which the air itself hisses with pollution. Finally, Victor expresses his desire to lecture the world about the dangers of clear-cutting rainforest.

By: [insert clever name here]

[insert clever name here] — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:33:33 -0800

This is a hoax. I'm convinced of it, even though I've only got my gut instint and the impression that this guy is kind of shady. Some of the dates and stories are off. Here, he says he posted the recordings in 1999. However, archive.org reveals no victor webpage before late 2000. He also only started "advertising" his page via usenet in 2000 And it also seems to convient that victor would die so soon after the site went up. Then there is the discrepency in the time he died. Old versions say march 3, 2001, new versions say march 2, 2001. That could be attributed to a bad memory. None of this, is of course, proof. I just have a giant gut feeling that this is a hoax. Not some minor misunderstanding of what the bird might actually be saying, but made up recordings. The guy does stuff involving reverse recording so I have no problem believing he would fiddle with his own voice until he got it sounding like a budgie. I have no doubt that someday we'll learn that animals exceed our expectations and understanding of intelligence. However, this guy ain't going to be the forefather. Oh, and I don't remember where it is now, but somewhere on his site, he explains the reason he hasn't had this verified scientifically is because he's in Canada and its not like the US. I guess he's saying Canada doesn't do science.

By: [insert clever name here]

[insert clever name here] — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:34:11 -0800

Ah, here it is. I should have looked a little harder: http://www.victorsarchives.homestead.com/week10.html

By: nobody

nobody — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:22:00 -0800

I haven't watched any of the videos yet, but the audio recordings sound very suspicious to me. My first thought in listening to a few was that the bird's voice sounded very, very creepy. They do sound like they're produced through reverse recording, like Twin Peaks' Black Lodge segments, spoken backwards and then played backwards. Audio analysis could probably prove or disprove this.

By: angrynative

angrynative — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:14:45 -0800

We have a couple of talking birds and while they never cease to amaze me with wtf will come outta thier mouths (it's like having little family samplers) It seems the people who live here are non delusional enough to realize that they are just "parroting" back what they have heard. That guy would have to walk about rambling like a madman for his bird to say this shit. That is if in fact his bird is actually saying anything. Budgies are not know as such clear speakers. For the most part budgie "speech" sounds like mumbling at best. This is absolutely fake.

By: sellout

sellout — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:46:57 -0800

Even if the voice is real, he's the Penny Patterson of the bird world. A hack, and a champion of confirmation bias.

By: sellout

sellout — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:50:13 -0800

~~Even~~ If the voice is real...

By: ori

ori — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:14:46 -0800

It seems too elaborate to be a fake. I think that he genuinely believes in this budgie.

By: beagle

beagle — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:13:18 -0800

This thread just would not be complete without reference to the story of a particularly talented parrot who possessed both great intelligence and a prehensile penis.