Humans appear to be in good company: the kea parrot of New Zealand has become the first non-mammal to show signs of contagious “laughter.” Kea parrots aren’t quite cracking each other up in mid-flight ...

New Zealand’s highly intelligent parrot, the playful kea bird, has a contagious “play call,” like human laughter, that makes other kea birds want to play more. A new study in the journal Current ...

Raoul Schwing remembers sitting on a New Zealand mountaintop, watching a kea hovering in front of him, just an arm’s reach away. The large green parrot had jumped into an updraft, and was flying into ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. GrrlScientist writes about evolution, ecology, behavior and health. Kea, Nestor notabilis, are large parrots that live in alpine ...

Kea inhabit high in New Zealand’s South Island mountains, where they thrive in frigid, harsh alpine habitats. Researchers learn about kea behavior in order to help defend them better and gain insights ...

For the first time in birds, researchers say they have found evidence that a New Zealand parrot has the avian equivalent of an infectious laugh. They call it "positive emotional contagion" — which ...

Scientists studying kea, New Zealand’s alpine parrot, revealed that the famously mischievous birds could understand probabilities, an impressive mental feat. The pair of researchers put six birds ...

Bruce, a partially beak-less Kea parrot, is giving the term "bird brained" new meaning by wow-ing scientists with his innovative self-care tools. Animal Minds/University of Auckl Bruce, a partially ...

The bird is a kea from New Zealand, and his fabrication of an instrument to help him preen his feathers appears to be unique, researchers say. By Nicholas Bakalar Many animals are known to use tools, ...

All of the captive kea were given the opportunity to participate in the sampling task, but not all of them were interested. (Credit: Amalia Bastos.) Those remarkable kea are at it again: now the ...

New Zealand's highly intelligent parrot, the playful kea bird, has a contagious "play call," like human laughter, that makes other kea birds want to play more. A new study in the journal Current ...