Let's assume that the story about a Japanese parrot who helped police return him to his owners by reciting "his" (his owners') name and address isn't a hoax. It's a perfect storm of news appeal: animal in distress, authority that behaves comically rather than menacingly. But there's a hidden seam here: parrots can speak Japanese? I guess I knew that, in the sense that I knew that people from different countries owned parrots, and that parrots owned by Peruvians would speak Spanish, parrots owned by Brazilians would speak Portugese, parrots owned by Finns would speak Finnish. But can parrots exactly mimic human speech no matter what the language, or are there certain languages that are harder (or even impossible) for them to speak.