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Parakeet

                        PARAKEET, common name for the smaller members of
                        the parrot family Psittacidae. As the
                        name is based on size rather than on taxonomic
                        relationship, members of about 15 diverse genera are
                        called parakeets, in both the New and Old Worlds.
                        Several are commonly kept as cage birds; the best
                        known of these is the Australian budgerigar,
                        Melopsittacus undulatus, which is the bird usually
                        called parakeet in pet stores. Wild "budgies" are mostly
                        green, but many color varieties have been bred in
                        captivity. 

                        The largest genus of parakeets in the tropical Americas
                        is Aratinga, with some 19 species, known in the
                        cage-bird trade as conures. Closely related to these
                        was the Carolina parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis,
                        which was once abundant in the southern U.S. but is
                        now extinct, the last individual having died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The
                        Carolina parakeet was about 30 cm (about 12 in) long, with a long, pointed tail, a
                        green body, and a yellow head and orange face. Its extinction had several causes,
                        but the primary cause was that it was shot as a severe pest in fruit-growing areas.