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
Brown-necked parrot Brown-necked parrot The brown-necked parrot ("Poicephalus fuscicollis"), sometimes known in aviculture as the uncape parrot, is a large "Poicephalus" parrot species endemic to Africa consisting of the savanna-dwelling brown-necked parrot ("P. fuscicollis fuscicollis") and grey-headed parrot ("P. f. suahelicus") subspecies. It formerly included the Cape parrot (now "Poicephalus robustus") as a subspecies before the Cape parrot was re-classified as a distinct species. German naturalist Heinrich Kuhl described the brown-necked parrot in his 1819 work "Conspectus Psittacorum". Although unsure of its country of origin, he felt it was definitely a distinct species and related to the Cape parrot. The species name