The intelligence of parrots, especially that of the grey parrots, are relatively well-known.

However, a recent study in which a 22 year old grey parrot beat both human children and Harvard students in a memory test still managed to send shockwaves in the scientific community.

The memorizing capacities of the parrot, 21 Harvard students and 21 children was done through a game known as a shell game. The game is a simple one in which the participants have to memorize and track under which shell the target pom-poms are hidden under.

Out of the 14 rounds of the game that was played, Griffin the parrot managed to perform at a level that is on par or even greater than that of fully grown adults in 12 rounds. Moreover, Griffin managed to outperform children under all conditions that were tested in this experiment.

Hrag Pailian, who spearheaded the study, asked people to really think and let the fact that a bird outperformed some of the brightest human adults in a game of memory.

During the experiment, pom-poms of four different colors were placed under identically looking cups. After mixing the cups a set number of times, participants were asked to find under which cup the pom-pom that the researcher is asking for.

This added difficulty is just more proof how incredible Griffin’s performance as a parrot is. Because the researcher does not clarify which pom-pom the participants will be asked to recognize, participants are thus forced to track the movement of all four cups, rather than just one cup.

Griffin received cashew nuts for each successful performance, a rather small reward for the incredible performance that it put in throughout the entire experiment.

One of the greatest revelations that this experiment allowed researchers to understand was that visual memory has been present in the common ancestors of both humans and parrots. The two species have split genetically 300 million years ago.

It is more amazing since the brains of grey parrots are only the size of a walnut. However, despite its small size, it is dense with neutrons, widely understood as the neurological component that determines the intelligence of a species.

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