Respect the birds.

[wolven7]

'The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.

'The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.

'He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do. '

That's pretty fucking cool. And that's just a parrot.

Comments

[hametsunosaturn.livejournal.com]

Okay, that parrot is pretty damn cool.

I giggled at the line he said about putting that bird on the camera.


That's pretty fucking cool. And that's just a parrot.
More like, "That's pretty fucking cool, because that's just a parrot." XD

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Eh. Ravens could do it better. *Nods*

[hametsunosaturn.livejournal.com]

Which... is why... the fact that it's just a parrot makes ... that much cooler.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i guess. I wonder what else we could teach it...

This is why...

[sean-mcgyvern.livejournal.com]

...we shouldn't underestimate other creatures. One of the ideas that has puzzled me to no end is how we expect to talk to and understand aliens from other worlds when we can't even understand cats, whales, elephants, chimps, dolphins...oh the list goes on. They're speaking to us and we just can't understand them. Granted cats may have a more limited vocabulary, but they're thinking. Our whole idea of what constitutes intelligence seems to be all or nothing, while in reality there's so much more.
My cats recognize themselves in a mirror and understand object permanence. They are rapt if you make something disappear.
And bird owners have noticed for years that they had very intelligent pets in their homes. While not all of them will create new words for novel situations, there are many who, when confronted with a new situation, come up with the closest word they know to describe it. It may not be perfect, but it's the same thing humans do at a certain stage.

You know, I miss birds in my life....

Re: This is why...

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Precisely. The more people engage in findings of this sort, we will find that there are more acknowledgements of the in-between levels of cognition.

Won't that be a treat?