Dead Parrot sketch of "Death in Paradise". A joke dated AD 400, recently translated from Greek, shows similarities to the Parrot sketch. It was written by Hierocles and Philagrius and was included in a compilation of 265 jokes titled "Philogelos: The Laugh Addict". In the Greek version, a man complains to a slave-merchant that his new slave has died. The slave-merchant replies, "When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" In Mark Twain's humorous short story "A Nevada Funeral", two characters use a series of euphemisms for death including 'kicked the bucket' and 'departed to that mysterious country from whose
Mulga parrot Mulga parrot The mulga parrot ("Psephotellus varius"), also known as the many-coloured parrot, is endemic to arid scrublands and lightly timbered grasslands in the interior of southern Australia. The mulga parrot was given its current scientific name of "Psephotellus varius" by American zoologist Austin Hobart Clark in 1910, after its name "Psephotus multicolor" was ruled invalid as the original combination ("Psittacus multicolor") had been used for another species. In 1955, British evolutionary biologist Arthur Cain reviewed various described subspecies and found none were valid. Cain concluded in 1955 that within the genus "Psephotus" the mulga parrot was more closely related