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Who's a clever boy then?
We all know parrots have the gift of the gab but not it seems they are pretty near the top of the intelligence tree too. A test carried out with African Grey parrots has discovered that they have the intelligence of a three year old child and solved puzzles that had previously stumped monkeys and dogs.When pieces of walnut were hidden in opaque pots, the parrots were 70 - 80% accurate in identifying the pot holding the walnut, just based on whether it made a noise or not. Most impressively, they understood that if a tub made no noise, not only did it not contain the walnut, but that it would also be in the other tub demonstrating an understanding of cause and effect which researchers from the University of Vienna have found remarkable.
Researcher Dr Christian Schloegl told the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: "Such behaviour has so far been shown only in great apes but not in any other non-human animal."