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",
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,