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Address please?

 
 
Reply Wed 21 May, 2008 11:05 pm
Good bird!!



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/21/international/i003432D11.DTL


Lost parrot tells veterinarian his address
Wednesday, May 21, 2008


(05-21) 16:51 PDT TOKYO, Japan (AP) --
When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught — recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help.
Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor's roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.
He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.
"I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.
"We checked the address, and what do you know, a Nakamura family really lived there. So we told them we've found Yosuke," Uemura said.
The Nakamura family told police they had been teaching the bird its name and address for about two years.
But Yosuke apparently wasn't keen on opening up to police officials.
"I tried to be friendly and talked to him, but he completely ignored me," Uemura said.
 
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Reply Thu 22 May, 2008 01:38 pm
With my being a natural-born cynic, I've my doubts whether this is totally true (from the source..not you Osso), but 'ya know what? I don't care how true it is. I love this story just because it could be true, knowing a little about African Grey parrots. They're far smarter than most people know. I just checked the reliability of this story and SNOPES.com has it listed as a NEW story, but has not debunked it as urban myth.

My g/f had an African Grey, and she told me that it said phrases and made responses that no one TAUGHT them. As an example, her family used to play ping-pong with the bird in the room. The bird used to cheer them on with "Good point" and "too bad" in the correct spots, and even once cried "Ow!" when it was hit by a stray ball - none of which were phrases taught to this bird.

How in God's name this bird knew that this was a competition that required such commentary of that sort is beyond me. It was not "parroting" anything that it had observed before.
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Reply Thu 22 May, 2008 02:57 pm
from the BBC - not that I can tell what the bird is saying...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7414846.stm


There have been recent articles (somewhere) about Alex, the African Grey, a much loved and studied bird.
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Reply Thu 22 May, 2008 03:04 pm
Tokyo police has confirmed the parrot story; here's the report from Japanese AP:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3XVo5LawdNeCcDBoxu9YP45ZVJgD90PT2I00

Quote:
He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

"I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

"[........]

But Yosuke apparently wasn't keen on opening up to police officials.
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Reply Thu 22 May, 2008 04:05 pm
An interesting New Yorker article on Alex, the african grey parrot I mentioned above.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_talbot
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Reply Thu 22 May, 2008 04:45 pm
osso: that's the article I was thinking of, thanks. I knew there was more to this but I had forgotten about Alex and those PBS specials.
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Reply Fri 23 May, 2008 01:33 pm
Looking around the New Yorker link I found this >

http://www.cartoonbank.com/assets/1/67802_n.gif

> funny enough on its own, but sad in the sense that ratties, too, are intelligent....
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