Thursday, January 04, 2007

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists



This story from the BBC tells of a parrot (an African Grey named N'kisi) who has a vocabulary of 950 words. N'kisi is, by all accounts, one talkative and charming parrot.

The parrot pictured at left is Barney. Barney talked a bit, and could be a very entertaining fellow. But Barney had a dark side. His sweet, whimsical moments were often followed by shrieking and biting, and the tang of human blood in the air.

The BBC, to my knowledge, has never done a feature story on Barney.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry that Barney's dark side took over and wonder if he's at this moment making his mark on someone else? Time to adopt Betty maybe? She always seemed sweet.

Anonymous said...

My favorite was when he sang the Beatles with us.

Other than that he was one scary ass bird.

Anonymous said...

I have a friend that has a parrot they are cool. I had a paraquite as a kid his name was Pity and he could talk and imitate voices he got me and my sister is a lot of trouble

Joe said...

Katy, they are cool. But if you had a dog that bit like that, he'd be put down in a heartbeat.

Kate, it's amazing how little I miss him. I no longer wake up after working late to the sound of a pissed-off parrot screaming because he's not getting any attention.

Dale, we like Betty.

What's this mean--my word verification is "sppam"

Anonymous said...

But he would always screech "Hello, Bubs" even when it was me (in-law).

Of course there's nothing more frightening then the sound of beating wings approching from behind when you're in a house.

Joe said...

Shirmp? What are you, some kind of Okie? You pronounce it "shirmp"?

Anonymous said...

"African grey-- lovely plumage."

"If this bird hadn't been nailed to it's perch, it'd be pushing up the daisies...."

Joe said...

AHA! THAT'S why my bird was such an aggressive jerk--he was pining for the fjords!

Anonymous said...

"This is an ex-parrot...."

When Graham Chapman died back in the late eighties, John Cleese paraphrased that bit at his funeral. "This is an ex-comediene!" It was truly inspired.