Apollo is an African grey parrot with a passion for pistachios and millions of followers on social media. According to his owners, he also has the brain power of a human toddler.
“He’s very happy, he’s very outgoing, he really wants to perform for everybody,” said Dalton Mason, one of Apollo’s owners. “He’s a complete and total showoff.”
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Dalton Mason and his wife Victoria went to their local pet store in St. Petersburg in 2020 to buy crickets for their gecko. They ended up taking Apollo home.
“He was surrendered by his original owner and was only 8 months old,” Dalton said.
Victoria said she wanted a parrot before she and her husband were a couple.
“Birds are our pets,” she said. “We are bird people.”
The couple has trained their parrot to recognize objects, colors, and some numbers. He can ask, “What’s this?” and then correctly distinguish between glass, metal, and paper. He also greets people with, “Hey, buddies,” and can solve simple puzzles.
“He can easily adopt social habits,” Dalton said.
Apollo has a large fan base. On a TikTok account run by the Masons, the bird has 2.9 million followers. He also has 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube and 1.3 million followers on Instagram. He started making headlines in 2022.
“We attribute his success on social media to his character,” Dalton said. “He’s an attention-getter.”
The Freemasons now dedicate their lives to training Apollo. They both do it full-time, because the income from his social media accounts provides them with an income.
“We spend a lot of time with him,” Victoria said, explaining that raising a parrot takes work, as they can be noisy, destructive and demanding. (In a viral video, Apollo says, “I want fresh water.”)
Besides Apollo, the Freemasons have two more white-bellied caiques, Soleil and Ophelia, both 3.
“I want to emphasize that we still recognize them as animals. It’s not like we’re trying to socialize them like humans,” Victoria said. “We’re doing what we can to work within the boundaries of their nature.”
White-bellied parrots are generally not as smart as African greys, the Freemasons explained.
“They’re a really good emotional support for Apollo,” Dalton said.
African grey parrots have become known for their innate intelligence and ability to learn, largely due to the research of Irene Pepperberg, a scientist specializing in animal cognition. She has studied an African grey parrot named Alex and observed his vocal behavior for decades, including when she was a research associate at Harvard University.
“What Apollo does is fascinating,” Pepperberg said in an interview with The Washington Post. “It shows that Alex wasn’t just an Einstein parrot, that other parrots are capable.”
“I want people to understand and really appreciate that these people dedicate their entire lives to this bird, and there are very few people in the world who can do that,” Pepperberg continued. “It takes time, effort and energy to do this.”
Pepperberg used a training method for Alex called the model/rival technique, which involves two trainers. One gives the animal instructions, while the other models correct and incorrect responses. The model trainer acts as the parrot’s rival student, competing for the other trainer’s attention.
When Pepperberg began her research, “parrots were considered mindless imitators because no one had figured out how to train them accordingly,” she said. “No one believed it could work.”
“We did 30 years of very careful research and built a very clear argument about his understanding,” Pepperberg said of Alex, who died in 2007 at age 31. Captive African grey parrots typically live to be between 40 and 60 years old.
“It was very interactive, and he was able to see how he could use his vocalizations to control his environment to some extent,” Pepperberg said. “The more he learned, the more he could make things happen.”
African grey parrots have a natural ability to be strong learners, Pepperberg said. Their vocal tract allows them to speak more clearly than other parrots, and “they have an extra bit of the brain that seems to be used for learning,” she said.
For Alex, “it wasn’t just simple stimulus-response or associative learning. He really understood what we were talking about,” said Pepperberg, who noted that she tested Alex’s cognitive abilities at the level of a 4-year-old human.
The Freemasons used the same training strategy with Apollo.
“What she did with Alex proved that this was possible,” Dalton said, adding that he had seen documentaries and read books about Alex and Pepperberg, which led him to the idea of raising Apollo the same way. The Masons believe their 4-year-old bird has the intellectual abilities of a human toddler, and they say he loves to learn.
“He’s extremely content, as far as we can tell,” Dalton said, noting that Gracie Barrentine, a student at Florida’s Eckerd College, is conducting a scientific study on Apollo. “He’s very well socialized.”
The Freemasons say they are not surprised that Apollo has built a large and dedicated following on social media.
“Talking animals are one of the greatest fantasies that exists,” Dalton said. “It’s really amazing and a little bit shocking that an animal can talk so well.”
Apollo caught the attention of Guinness World Records. He recently set the record for the most items identified by a parrot in three minutes after naming 12 objects, including socks, a book and an insect.
“Apollo is officially awesome,” Kylie Galloway, a senior public relations manager at Guinness World Records, wrote in an emailed statement to The Post.
The Freemasons believe that this is only the beginning of what Apollo will achieve.
“We are absolutely excited to share the future with him,” Victoria said.
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