Well, almost. Maybe should be. From Digg:
According to King, Echo was owned by a New Orleans crime boss and he’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, seen something he wasn’t supposed to, and wouldn’t stop talking about it. All this chatter, King told Heck, meant he was making himself into a potential target.
Because Echo isn’t a person, he couldn’t enter an actual witness protection program. At least not officially. At least not yet.
…
Occasionally parrots learn to mimic darker things. In South Carolina in 2010 a woman went to jail for abusing and neglecting her elderly mother. When local police entered the house they found a parrot that repeated “Help me, help me” — then laughed. They believed the parrot was mimicking the mother’s pleas, then the daughter’s laughter.
Sometimes parrots can be roped into criminal activity themselves. In September of 2010 in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, a parrot named Lorenzo was taught by his owners, members of a Cali drug cartel, to say “RUN, RUN” when he spotted the police. Lorenzo was guarding a load of guns and marijuana. He wasn’t prosecuted.
The few contemporary American cases where parrots have popped up in investigations haven’t resulted in convictions. More.
Let’s hope common sense prevails. 😉 The parrot can use human language to communicate what a parrot can think, but can’t be culpable for actions whose ethical nature it doesn’t understand.
Put another way, if an intelligent dog had “vocal cords” (a syrinx) like a parrot, he could tell a human in words that he needs to go outside or have his water dish refilled. But he does not go on to express interest in things that do not naturally concern a dog.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
See also: Furry, feathery, and finny animals speak their minds
and
Animal minds: In search of the minimal self