Some Birds are Smarter Than Others

I've begun to have more time to catch up on my daily web-reading lately, thanks in part to practicing speed-reading since December. In the first few weeks, I raised my reading rate from an embarrassing 180 words per minute to over 600 wpm for medium difficulty content. Content I am not so familiar with still hovers around 400 wpm.

I should be much faster by now, but I haven't been so diligent with my daily practice. According to the program I've been following, if I practice (do the reading drills) two hours a day for six weeks, I will be at 2000 wpm. Unfortunately, I haven't even gotten through half of the speed reading book, let alone have two hours every day to do drills. The most I seem to find time for is to read for an hour or so just to keep my current level.

The first two weeks, I was at home and had more time to practice. It felt like some kind of super power I had suddenly developed, and I was reading everything I could get my hands on. It was a great feeling to finish two books on the airplane on the way home and still have time for a movie and nap.

Anyway, I've been using my new super power to read other people's web-sites again, again and saw this BBC story about a Grey Parrot

Via: The (Eco)logical weblog.

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.

....

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

I have seen mentions of this here and there, but never stopped to read it until today, and I'm glad I did. I'm going to be expecting much more out of Awii and Klee from now on. I'm not going to tolerate Klee biting my ear, chewing on cables, and pooping on the floor anymore.

And although I used to think Awii was smart because he could say his name... I guess I was setting my expectations too low and he was taking advantage of it. Slacker. From today, he has to learn a word-a-week if he wants to keep his sunflower seed privileges.