Chomsky- selective breeding

[jess tauber]

I'd like to suggest a long-term study to see if parrots and other animals good at imitation can be selectively bred for syntactic abilities and larger vocabularies. The birds appear to be of reproductive age at from 5-7 years, so generational turnover can be relatively fast. Heck, they domesticated the Siberian silver fox in a few decades of dedicated work. What else could be accomplished here? Soon we may be forced to admit birds to our universities, and give them civil rights. Hurrah for Uplift.

Jess Tauber