There are indeed many indications of the intelligence of Kia parrots: they cooperate skillfully and they can estimate possibilities. As “joking” as New Zealanders are, they even encourage their own people to play with their infectious laughter. A new study from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna shows that they can also apparently distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces: they learn to differentiate between “known” and “unknown” as a rule and apply this in further experiments. With such abilities for abstract classification and differentiation, mountain parrots are on par with great apes and pigeons, experts write. In Open Science of the Royal Society.