The parrot can not only imitate human speech, but this bird species has a very intelligent mind. It was evident after an elderly bird beat Harvard University students in a memory test.
Through the experiment, an African parrot or its scientific name Psittacus erithacus or Griffin was used to test its memory efficiency compared to students from engineering and medicine.
Many parrots especially grey parrots can imitate human speech or other sounds. Before this, a study by scientist Irene Pepperberg suggested a high learning ability in a grey parrot named Alex. Alex was trained to use words to identify objects, describe them, count them, and even answer complex questions.
The test also tested the memory capacity of Griffin with 21 children ages 6 to 8 and 21 other adults against 22 years old bird in several games. The games called fluffy poms-poms, the researchers place four different coloreds such as blue, yellow-green, and red under plastic cups in a line.
Griffin beat the performance and has done three swaps of cups rather than the students and other children. The lead researcher, Hrag Pailian from the psychology department of the university admitted that it was very unexpected.
Sources: Dailymail.co.uk