Parrot Has 950-Word Vocabulary
One of my favorite books as a young boy was Vinson Brown’s How to Understand Animal Talk. With a little imagination and patience, learning to communicate with another species really isn’t all that hard.
Here’s an example of that sort of communication going in the opposite direction: Parrot’s oratory stuns scientists. The stuff about telepathy, and the generally breathless nature of the story, make me worry that what we’ve really got here is the Brit equivalent of the Weekly World News, but still, it’s fun.
January 27th, 2004 at 6:34 pm
Uh-huh…I’m glad to see the B.S. meter is still alive and active at lies.com.
I would have to see this reported in a peer-reviewed publication before I’d believe it, and letting James “The Amazing” Randi run a few of those tests would also convince me. Until then I’m highly suspicious (and yes, I’m a very skeptical scientist…so?).
January 27th, 2004 at 10:03 pm
Damned if that parrot doesn’t make more sense than an unscripted Chimp.
February 8th, 2004 at 10:50 pm
MR wrote:
“I would have to see this reported in a peer-reviewed publication before I’d believe it, and letting James “The Amazing” Randi run a few of those tests would also convince me. Until then I’m highly suspicious (and yes, I’m a very skeptical scientist…so?).”
How about the (peer reviewed) Journal of Scientific Exploration (17, pp. 601-615 (2003))?
Here’s a link to the telepathy study:
http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Animals/parrot_telepathy.html
Also got to hear N’Kisi in action via a RealAudio link on the base page’s N’Kisi Project page; sounded just like a kid talking …!
–gdw
June 20th, 2004 at 8:32 pm
Now you know that these parrots can say all those words and i wonder if this bird could see a picture of bill clinton and say LIAR LIAR?