A parrot called Griffin has humiliated students at Harvard University, as well as local children, by beating them in a memory test. Harvard researchers compared human memory skills with those of the African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) – an animal separated from humans by more than 300 million years of evolution. They compared how 21 Harvard undergraduates and 21 six-to-eight-year-old children performed against the 22-year-old bird Griffin in several rounds of a classic shell game. The game required mentally tracking the locations of fluffy pom-poms hidden under cups that swapped places a number of times. Griffin's accuracy was comparable to,...
