This Bird Does A Perfect R2-D2 Impression (And Yes, It's Real)
At any given time, the internet is positively flooded with videos of people doing voice impressions and the like. It's practically a rite of passage for anyone to either make a video like that or to be inadvertently exposed to roughly 700 of them during 5 minutes of scrolling through TikTok. But now, it looks as though someone has finally figured out a fresh new take on the genre, as seen with this bird who can mimic Star Wars hero R2-D2.
More specifically, this bird is a European starling named Jabber, and his skills of mimicry far surpass even the most adept of impressionists this side of YouTube. Not only is he able to reproduce the words of his owner nearly flawlessly, but he also demonstrates a little surprise by abruptly belting out the familiar beeps and whistles of everyone's favorite astromech droid R2-D2. One might ask if it's possible to learn this power. Well, probably not from a human.
European starlings are some of the most gifted mimics in the bird world, boasting the ability to recreate nearly any sound they hear (within reason, of course). As a result, it's not terribly uncommon for someone to, for instance, hear a cat meowing in a relatively populated area where these birds are native only to look up and see one of these cheeky little friends impersonating a random kitty they happened to hear earlier.
Apparently, Jabber is a bit of a celebrity in the r/parrots subreddit, occasionally popping up to show off his talents to the delight of the various users. Reddit user u/omgmypony often posts videos of him along with their other animals to the site, exhibiting skills ranging from whistling classical music (maybe he's a David Fincher fan) all the way to repeating phrases from his owner and, of course, the R2-D2 chattering. Plus, as a bonus, his owner has plenty of advice to give for anyone else interested in adopting a chatty little starling of their own.
Honestly, it's rather appropriate that such a clever bird would end up recreating these particular sounds. R2-D2 is well known in the Star Wars series for being surprisingly smart at times while sporting a real attitude at others. Like his little friend BB-8 from the Star Wars sequel trilogy, the droid often manages to manipulate his own bleep and bloop-laden method of speech just enough to add a little extra emotion to the sounds. That tendency makes Star Wars' spunky little droid character even more like his avian counterpart than one would expect.
It's humbling to see that humans no longer have a monopoly on impression videos. Plus, most of them aren't nearly as cute as a bird. So the internet really needs to step up. Come on, how about a sudden surge in birdcall videos? Beat them at their own game.
The Star Wars saga is now available on Disney Plus.
Source: r/parrots/Reddit
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