Dead Parrot sketch appearance on "The Muppet Show", Cleese appears as a pirate attempting to take over a spaceship during a "Pigs In Space" sketch. At the end of the sketch, he demands of the smart-mouthed talking parrot on his shoulder, "Do you want to be an ex-parrot?" In 1989's "The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball", a benefit for Amnesty International, the sketch opens similarly, but ends very differently: In a 1997 "Saturday Night Live" performance of the sketch, Cleese added a line to the rant: "Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians!" In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air",
Mascarene parrot of the scientific names, such as "Mascarinus obscurus" and "Coracopsis obscura". The unidentified parrot may have been a grey parrot ("Psittacus erithacus") instead. Another unidentified parrot specimen, this one brown and housed in Cabinet du Roi, was described by the French naturalist Comte de Buffon in 1779 under his entry for the Mascarene parrot, in which he pointed out similarities and differences between the two. The English palaeontologist Julian Hume has suggested the possibility that this might have been a lesser vasa parrot, if not a discoloured old Mascarene grey parakeet ("Psittacula bensoni"). The specimen is now lost. English zoologist