7. Alex The Existential Parrot
Parrots are famous mimics, able to produce human-like sounds of varying degrees of profanity. Alex the parrot, however, was unique in that he appeared to understand what he was saying. According to his owner/pet scientist, he had a vocabulary of around 100 words, he could count, recognise colours, and more than 50 objects. Over his lifetime, Alex passed a series of increasingly difficult cognitive tests, including those regarding object permanence - an understanding that objects still exists when you can't see them - which is seen as a major milestone in human development, let alone birds. Most remarkably, though, Alex is supposedly the only non-human to ever ask an existential question. According to his keeper, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the parrot once looked at himself in a mirror and asked "what colour?". He then learnt that he was "grey" after being told a couple of times. He has also appeared to have understood the concept of "zero", a disarmingly difficult concept to master. There has been plenty of discussion and disagreement about Alex's remarkable abilities. Some think that he might be a combination of clever mimicry and anthropomorphisation by his keepers, whereas others are convinced that he was genuinely able to grasp complex concepts. Okay, maybe you're able to look at yourself in the mirror and understand the concept of "nothing" (except when actively ignoring the state of your bank balance) but, considering Alex's brain is the size of a walnut, this is pretty amazing. If his brain was scaled up to human size, we might have and Einstein parrot on our hands.