“Psychic Parrot”: Now a Norwegian Blue….

Back in January, the BBC released a disturbingly credulous news report on N’kisi, a parrot that not only had an alleged vocabulary of 950 words, but also exhibited telepathic talents.
Well, both the language experts and the sceptics were soon debunking it. Now, according to Language Log, the BBC has quietly retracted the original story:

But now, as Neil Golightly informs me, the original BBC story link ………… which used to point to the story about N’kisi by Alex Kirby, “BBC News Online environment correspondent”, datelined 1/26/2007, under the headline “Parrot’s oratory stuns scientists”, — now points to an entirely different story, “Animal world’s communication kings”, by Rebecca Morelle, “Science reporter, BBC News”, datelined 5/1/2007.
At the bottom of this new story, there is a little note:
Note: This story about animal communication has replaced an earlier one on this page which contained factual inaccuracies we were unable to correct. As a result, the original story is no longer in our archive.

In other words, when all of the “factual inaccuracies” were removed, there was no story left!