Critters are smarter than some people. Ask any cat!

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts." -- John Steinbeck

The following links regard the amazing development of a vocabulary of over 300 words, and the intelligent use of those words, by a specially trained parrot. "Training procedures that rely on referential social modeling and differ significantly from common ethological and psychological paradigms, have enabled a parrot to acquire and combine English vocalizations (an exceptional code) to: (1) request, refuse, quantify, identify, and categorize objects, and (2) control, to a limited extent, its immediate environment (e.g., Pepperberg 1981, 1990a, 1990b, 1992b)."

Alex the Parrot video clip
About Our Research (Alexfoundation.org's research page)
Referential Communication with an African Grey Parrot (archive)
Grey Parrot Intelligence - IAS 1995 (Archive)

"Bye. You be good. I'm gonna go eat dinner. I'll see you tomorrow." I hear these words most nights as I close the door of my laboratory. Such a series of vocalizations would not be surprising if they were to come from the lips of my graduate or undergraduate students, but they come from a beak...the beak of my research subject, an African Grey parrot". -- Irene M. Pepperberg, PhD, Harvard '76, Chemical Physics