Smartest Parrot In The World Defeats Harvard Students In Memory Test Like A Boss
In a game of shells where four different coloured pompoms were hidden in four identical paper cups.
We¡¯ve seen in the past how smart parrots can truly be. Whether it is mimicking voices or doing tricks, they¡¯re surely a fun species of birds.
And now a parrot has defeated Harvard University students in a memory test.
Harvard University
Yes, you read that right, a parrot has managed to defeat undergrads of one of the toughest institutes in the world. Researchers were testing human memory skills with that of a grey African parrot, also referred to as Psittacus erithacus.
The test (study published in Nature) included a game of shells where four different coloured pompoms were hidden in four identical paper cups.
The cups would undergo swaps after which both human participants and the bird were asked to find out which coloured pompom was in which cup.
Memory test for parrot vs humans
The test involved humans 21 children from the age group of 6 to 8 years and 21 adults. The parrot was able to perform at par and sometimes even better than human adults at a game stretched over 12 to 14 rounds with its difficulty varying.
Against kids, the smart parrot stood superior across all difficulty levels. Only with three to four moves, the parrot started to lose to humans.
Harvard University
Study leader Hrag Pailian at Harvard¡¯s Department of Psychology, said in a statement to the Harvard Gazette, ¡°Think about it ¨C grey parrot outperforms Harvard undergrads. That¡¯s pretty freaking awesome. We had students concentrating in engineering, pre-med, this, that, seniors, and he just kicked their butts.¡±
Co-author Dr Irene Pepperberg, a research associate in Harvard's Psychology Department explains how a parrot is able to outsmart humans at this task, ¡°The reason why these birds do so well on the cognitive task we give them is that surprisingly, although their brain is the size of a shelled walnut, it is so densely packed with neurons that the density is comparable to that of non-human primates.¡±
Harvard University
She also states that this study shows how the ability to visually memorise things is an evolutionary ancient ability and goes back to when human and parrots had a common ancestor, ¡°The last common ancestor we had with parrots was back at the dinosaurs 300-plus million years ago. We do think that these manipulation abilities ¨C some limited aspect of it ¨C probably goes back to a common ancestor and then it developed over time so that you get to this much more complicated and complex ability now.
Check out the parrot defeat humans below:
