I sometimes hear that humans have language and that is a tremendous advantage. I agree and much of my life is about speaking/listening to speech and reading/writing written words. I think speech developed among humans long before writing, although making meaningful marks goes back a surprisingly long way.
I guess no animal can speak in the human sense of doing so as well as a parrot can. Lynn showed me a short video clip on Facebook of a parrot speaking over an open phone line to another parrot. Very impressive and thought-provoking to me. I use Facetime and Zoom to see and talk to people far away. Maybe parrots are going to start doing the same thing. I guess, for now, they need human help but who knows what's ahead? Think of Alexa, Siri and Cortana.
I googled "Can parrots use Alexa?" (https://www.google.com/search?q=can+parrots+use+Alexa) I guess some parrots have ordered themselves treats with Alexa's help. My wife uses Siri, another voice-based assistant, to search with Google. I haven't seen frightened comments about dark and frightening future events featuring wi-fi technology and other species but I suspect that many animals don't like the deal they have been getting from humans and their habits and their habitats.
If some experimenters record commands and make a mechanism for animals to play the recordings, non-speaking animals could send orders, too. Just something to think about.
