So who's a clever boy then?

Parrot 'knows 950 words, cracks jokes and makes up sentences' BY SARAH GETTY A PARROT with a 950-word vocabulary, a sense of humour and alleged powers of telepathy is forcing experts to reconsider the ability of animals and humans to communicate. Six-year-old African grey N'kisi is able to use words in context and verbs with past, present and future tenses. Like young children, he reportedly resorts to creativity when he does not know the exact word he wants - for example, saying 'flied' for 'flew' and inventing a 'pretty smell medicine' to describe aromatherapy oils used by his owner, New York artist Aimee Morgana.

N'kisi also has a dry sense of humour. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he apparently joked: 'You got to put this bird on the camera'. He also associates photos with real people or objects. When he first met primatologist Dr Jane Goodall after seeing her pictured with apes, he greeted her with: 'Got a chimp?' Dr. Goodall says N'kisi is an 'out-standing example of interspecies communication' - but new studies suggest his skills may not stop at verbal. In a test reported in next month's BBC Wildlife Magazine, N'kisi and Mr Morgana were put in separate rooms and filmed as she randomly opened envelopes containing picture cards. The bird, bred in captivity, chose appropriate words for the pictures three times more often than chance would allow. He even said: 'What ya doing on the phone?' to a picture of a man with a phone. Prof Donald Broom, of Cambridge University veterinary school, said: 'The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear.'

The Metro Apr Jan27,2004