Two-headed Turtle Goes on Display in Pa.

AP Photo: Store manager Jay Jacoby displays a two-headed red slider at Big Al's Aquarium Supercenter in East Norriton, Pa., Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007. The rare turtle is on display at the store. (AP Photo/Matt Rouke)

Source: AP on Yahoo! News

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - A pet store has bought a two-headed turtle from a collector and plans to keep it on display, the store manager said. The 2-month-old turtle, actually conjoined red-eared slider twins, fits on a silver dollar.

It has two heads sticking out from opposite ends of its shell, along with a pair of front teeth on each side. But there is just one set of back feet and one tail.

The turtle is apparently healthy, and the species can live 15 to 20 years, said Jay Jacoby, manager of Big Al's Aquarium Supercenter in East Norriton. The turtle has not yet been named.

The store would not disclose how much it paid.

The same exotic-turtle collector sold another Big Al's store a conjoined twin about 20 years ago, Jacoby said. The man lives in Florida, but he declined to identify him.

Brainy Parrot Alex Dies at 31

The Alex Foundation website's Photo: Dr. Irene Pepperberg, Alex the African grey, and friends.

The world of aviculture has been violently "ruffled" by the sad news of the death of Alex, the brainy African Grey parrot. For years Alex had helped researchers about the study of cognitive and communicative abilities of parrots as intelligent creatures. He not only had the ability to mimick the words taught, but also seemed to "understand" them. Now, who was it that first coined the term "bird brain"?

Source: AFP on Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Alex, the African grey parrot who gained celebrity for his exceptional communication skills, has died at the age of 31, his owner, comparative psychologist Irene Pepperberg, has announced.

Alex was taught more than 100 English words by Pepperberg and could hold a limited conversation using phrases such as "I want X" or "I want to go Y", with the variables referring to appropriate objects or locations.

The bird could also identify 50 objects, seven colors, five shapes and quantities up to six, Pepperberg, who works at Brandeis and Harvard Universities, both near Boston, Massachusetts, said on a website devoted to Alex.

The parrot "showed the emotional equivalent of a two-year-old child and intellectual equivalent of a five-year-old," Pepperberg said.

Talkative Alex helped to "shatter the generally held notion that parrots are only capable of mindless vocal mimicry," the website -- http://www.alexfoundation.org/ -- says.

"Alex has left a significant legacy -- not only have he and Dr. Pepperberg and their landmark experiments in modern comparative psychology changed our views of the capabilities of avian minds, but they have forever changed our perception of the term 'bird brains'," it says.

Alex died on Friday of natural causes, according to the website.

On Thursday, when Pepperberg put Alex back in his cage for the night, she says he told her: "You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you."

The life expectancy of an African grey parrot is 50 to 60 years.

Motherly Instinct Begins to Kick In?

Working in the industry that I'm in, one blatant thing you have to sacrifice is your weekends. You have to forget about spending time with the rest of the family and... in my case, my pet cockatiel. I must admit that sometimes I do think about Sun-Ray, even while I'm interacting with a client. I wonder what she's doing, whether she misses me as much as I do her. I'm thinking, in the future when I have my own house - and thus, a big room for my future parrots - I'm definitely going to install one of those webcams in it, so I could survey my birds and feel 'near' to them. They call it "electronic nannies" - the webcams.

Almost a week ago, I bought and put a nestbox inside Sun-Ray's cage. I thought it would serve as an entertainment for her, despite I was very well aware that an adult hen plus a nestbox with some bedding inside equals to the increase of 'I-am-a-Mummy' hormone level. Sun-Ray, naturally, regards the nestbox - besides something she can nibble and somewhere can retreat herself to for privacy - as, like the name suggests, a nest. Even before the nestbox was introduced to her, Sun-Ray had shamelessly shown signs of desperately wanting a mate. She had those sweet mating calls... but the sounds turned out disgusting if she became aroused whenever I petted her. I've never petted her in any way sexually stimulating. Petting Sun-Ray has always been the same from the beginning. She only permits me to rub and scratch her head area. Now she's taking it the wrong way. Everytime that happened, I either ignored her or put her down. Sometimes I had to tell her off, "Sun-Ray, I'm a girl - like you! I'm not your mate! And besides, I'm human!!"

Today was another dragging Sunday. I went back to my desk after provided what the client needed, only to find a text-message from Billa that Sun-Ray had laid an egg! I replied her message in an instant, but stopped myself halfway, just to dial her number. In a voice full of excitement, she related how she was worried Sun-Ray hadn't come out from the nestbox all morning. When she investigated, Sun-Ray was sitting on an egg!

Photo: Doesn't she look angelic?

My imagination was confirmed on how cute she would look when I rushed to my room after work to see with my own two eyes. She was angelic, although aggressively defending what she thought her 'baby' that will hatch soon if she's patient enough to incubate it. That's okay... I'm going to let her tend to it two weeks or so until the day she finds out that her efforts are futile. Only then will I throw the egg away.

And find her a mate - a cockatiel cock.

Photo: "Stay away!"