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
Rodrigues parrot and proportionally its head was the largest of any Mascarene species of parrot. The skeleton of the Rodrigues parrot had similarities with the "Tanygnathus" and "Psittacula" parrot genera. The pectoral and pelvic bones were similar in size to those of the New Zealand kaka ("Nestor meridionalis"), and it may have looked similar to the great-billed parrot ("Tanygnathus megalorynchos") in life, but with a larger head and tail. It differed from other Mascarene parrots in several skeletal features, including having nostrils that faced upwards instead of forwards. No features of the skull suggest it had a crest like the broad-billed parrot,