The word of the week this week was going to be another one inspired by ‘The Chase’ (other daytime quiz shows are available). But unfortunately I spelled it wrong when I wrote it down, and now I can’t find it. I know it had something to do with animals that can mimic human speech. After several hours of internet research on parrots (apparently the African Grey is the number one talking bird), I still couldn’t find it. So I went with dimorphous instead, which came up a lot during said ill-fated parrot research.
Despite sounding like a super-villain from a Marvel comic, dimorphous is when something comes in two distinct forms. It’s mainly used in biology to describe species where the male and female look very different. Think ducks, lions and those weird fish where the female is 50 times bigger than the male. Ewww. Here’s a picture of the dimorphous eclectus parrot (the green one is male and the red one is female).
Oh, and if anyone saw that episode of ‘The Chase’ and knows what the word is (it definitely maybe started with ‘anthro’), please let me know.
Still, at least I’ve learned a lot about parrots today.