A Right-footed Parrot

Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy

Aimée Morgana noticed that her language-using African Grey parrot, N’kisi, often seemed to respond to her thoughts and intentions in a seemingly telepathic manner. We set up a series of trials to test whether this apparent telepathic ability would be expressed in formal tests in which Aimée and the parrot were in different rooms, on different floors, under conditions in which the parrot could r...

White-Footed and Deer Mice

BirdBuggy – Autonomous Mobile Parrot Perch

Most docking methods involving a small robot and a station require the docking station to communicate with the robot. Few robots are able to dock with a passive base station. Even fewer can also be “driven” by a bird. This paper presents a novel way for parrot-guided transportation and autonomous docking using range lights and a web camera.

Variation in the Onset of Incubation in a Neotropical Parrot

We studied the onset of incubation in the Green-rumped Parrotlet (Forpus passerinus), a cavity-nesting species with female-only incubation starting on the first egg and asynchronous hatching. We quantified how the onset of incubation varied among individual females, with stage of egg-laying and by ultimate clutch size. We then examined whether this variation affected the incubation period and h...

Genetic variability in three Amazon parrot species.

Parrots of the genus Amazona are among the most threatened species of the Order Pscittaciformes. This work describes allozyme polymorphisms in three Amazon parrot species--the Blue-fronted Amazon (Amazona aestiva), the Orange-winged Amazon (Amazona amazonica), and the Festive Amazon (Amazona festiva) -, and provides useful data for the evaluation of their genetic variability. We electrophoretic...