And he's savvy enough not to talk to the cops. Now that's one smart bird.

Wow! If only our cats had better diction.

The African grey parrot at my vet's office (he lives there) doesn't talk a lot, but imitates just about every other sound effect he hears in the office, including the rumble of trucks going by outside. Last week, we heard him say, "Oh, you're horrible!"

I love parrots. They really are smart, and they grow very attached to their people.

The New Yorker ran a great piece a couple weeks ago about a woman who tested animal communication using a parrot called Alex. It was pretty impressive: he could do a lot of the basic reasoning and perception tasks that a human child can do. Here's some audio of the author, though the story is not yet online.

I was gonna say talking to the cops is for the birds, but I guess that's not true either.

I've watched many short sciencey pieces on Alex and Irene Pepperberg. In fact, on a sad note, I think I just heard that Alex had passed away a little while ago. She had trained at least two more parrots though, so her work can continue, although I'm sure it's still a hard loss.

Here is the website for her work.