Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can a parrot read your mind? Aimée Morgana believed her African Grey N'kisi could pick up on her thoughts, so Rupert Sheldrake designed a surprisingly tough experiment. In 147 trials, Aimée sat in a separate room on a different floor looking at randomly chosen photographs, while N'kisi was filmed alone. Three independent blind judges listened to what the parrot said. N'kisi scored 23 direct hits — nearly double the 12 expected by luck — with odds against chance at roughly 1 in 4,000. Controls were unusually tight: third-party randomization, synchronized time-coded video, and an independent statistician. A NASA reviewer objected that biases in vocabulary and image selection could inflate results, while another statistician countered that a different analytical method reached the same conclusion. The study made TIME magazine, but no independent replication has been published, leaving this remarkable result standing alone.
Actual Paper Abstract
Aimée Morgana noticed that her language-using African Grey parrot, N'kisi, often seemed to respond to her thoughts and intentions in a seemingly telepathic manner. We set up a series of trials to test whether this apparent telepathic ability would be expressed in formal tests in which Aimée and the parrot were in different rooms, on different floors, under conditions in which the parrot could receive no sensory information from Aimée or from anyone else. During these trials, Aimée and the parrot were both videotaped continuously. At the beginning of each trial, Aimée opened a numbered sealed envelope containing a photograph, and then looked at it for two minutes. These photographs corresponded to a prespecified list of key words in N'kisi's vocabulary, and were selected and randomized in advance by a third party. We conducted a total of 147 two-minute trials. The recordings of N'kisi during these trials were transcribed blind by three independent transcribers. Their transcripts were generally in good agreement. Using a majority scoring method, in which at least two of the three transcribers were in agreement, N'kisi said one or more of the key words in 71 trials. He scored 23 hits: the key words he said corresponded to the target pictures. In a Randomized Permutation Analysis (RPA), there were as many or more hits than N'kisi actually scored in only 5 out of 20,000 random permutations, giving a p value of 5/20,000 or 0.00025. In a Bootstrap Resampling Analysis (BRA), only 4 out of 20,000 permutations equaled or exceeded N'kisi's actual score (p = 0.0002). Both by the RPA and BRA, the mean number of hits expected by chance was 12, with a standard deviation of 3. N'kisi repeated key words more when they were hits than when they were misses. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that N'kisi was reacting telepathically to Aimée's mental activity.
Research Notes
The most rigorous published test of language-based animal telepathy. N’kisi appeared in TIME magazine and attracted wide international media coverage. The double-blind design (separate rooms on different floors, synchronized time-coded video, three independent blind transcribers, third-party randomization, independent statistician at Free University of Amsterdam) is unusually stringent for a single-subject animal study. Published with in-print reviewer dissent from Jeffrey Scargle (NASA Ames: statistical model inappropriate due to cultural selection bias in vocabulary/images) and a pro-publication rebuttal from Mikel Aickin (correct permutation test reaches same conclusion). No independent replication has been published.
Aimée Morgana noticed that her African Grey parrot N’kisi appeared to respond telepathically to her thoughts and intentions. In 147 double-blind two-minute trials, Aimée viewed randomly selected sealed photographs in a separate room on a different floor while N’kisi was filmed alone in his cage. Using majority scoring by three independent blind transcribers, N’kisi said one or more prespecified key words in 71 of 131 scorable trials and scored 23 hits against a mean chance expectation of 12.2 (SD = 2.8). Randomized Permutation Analysis: p = 0.00025; Bootstrap Resampling Analysis: p = 0.0002. N’kisi also repeated hit words significantly more than misses (p = 0.0003, Fisher’s exact test). Results were robust across all three transcriber-agreement thresholds and after excluding the most frequent keyword (‘flower’). Reviewer commentary and editorial notes are appended in the published version.
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📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert, Morgana, Aimée (2003). Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy. Journal of Scientific Exploration.
@article{sheldrake_2003_parrot_telepathy,
title = {Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert and Morgana, Aimée},
year = {2003},
journal = {Journal of Scientific Exploration},
}