My Parrot and I

“This is the story that wrote me,” observes Brian Brett of his engaging ramble of a book, Tuco: The Parrot, the Others and a Scattershot World. It is a story that combines personal observation and reminiscence with scientific argument and speculation, all in the service of exploring how humankind, in assuming (and, by assuming, asserting) its superiority over all other life forms on the planet, has gone astray and imperilled its own future as a species. It is a story arguing for empathy and respect toward these other life forms.

In his classic man-and-animal memoir My Dog Tulip, British author J.R. Ackerley had wondered, surveying the anxious suitors for his Alsatian bitch of the title, “Did they suffer from headaches?”

A seemingly innocuous question containing profound implications.

And just as Ackerley attempted to understand the nature of the canine, Brett turns his attention to Tuco, his pet African grey parrot of 25 years, at...