I love cockatoos. I wanted a Moluccan until I saw that video, Bluekeet.

Has anyone ever seen this video? It's my favorite video of a cockatoo. He is arguing with the mom in the video.

I handle cockatoos better than kids. The way I see it, they're equavalent to kids. I don't know, I just get along better with birds. When they throw a tantrum it's hilarious.

Haha, I've seen that one! Cockatoos are the bird for you, if you want to have a 2-year-old for the next 80-90 years of your life.

My favorite one is this. Umbrella cockatoo is so angry, because her mom won't let her eat the table. I mean, it's made out of wood. She should obviously be allowed to eat it!

Most of us here have seen this:

Hmm, I don't know about you guys but i found cockatiels through cockatoos. I just thought they looked alike and were more affordable

But later on, i found how beautiful and how funny cockatiels were. As if then i thought cockatiels were supposed to be related to Cockatoos somehow. But now I've realized that is not true

Well actually, Erik, it's been discovered by scientists that cockatiels are biologically related to cockatoos. They count as a type of cockatoo, despite how different they may seem.

Cockatiels are literally the smallest of the cockatoo family. While they are small birds though, they definetely have some big personalities.

For a long time nobody knew whether cockatiels were cockatoos or grass parakeets, because they had characteristics of both. But now it's the DNA age and the verdict is in: they're cockatoos! They're so different from the other cockatoos that they have their own separate genus.

Just a few days ago I posted an "insane geekery" article on coloration mechanics, including the question of whether cockatoos have a green ancestor in their past that might make it possible to have a green mutation in cockatiels some day (I think the answer is yes). As part of that I got hold of a phylogeny chart for the parrot family and marked it up. Here's the chart, which shows the connections between cockatiels, the other cockatoos, and the rest of the parrot family pretty nicely:



And here's a link to the main article if anyone is interested in insane geekery lol.
http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... ation.html

it was an interesting read. I think I might be understanding a little more about the whole color mutation business (Keyword: "might"). Knowing a bit about the pigments helps a little.

On a semi related yet unrelated note, I also noticed you posted an article on the "spotted" gene as well. Ironically, I just noticed today, that Lucy has some of those spots on her chest (albeit very faint).

Though I'm assuming you started writing it a long time ago?

*cough* YinYin! *cough* in all seriousness, I thought that to be pretty interesting, as well.

YinYin is Shodu's granddaughter, but she gets her pearl gene from her daddy's side of the family not from Shodu's daughter Teela. Teela hasn't got a pearl gene to pass along, and if she did she wouldn't give it to a girl chick. She does have a lutino gene, but she only gives it to her sons not her daughters. Dang sex-linked mutations.

I actually wrote the spot gene article on Monday but it's been years in the making. I've been trying to figure it out since 2008 lol.