Mischievous parrot caught ordering strawberries, watermelons, ice-cream

A mischievous parrot was caught ordering strawberries, watermelons and ice-cream after ‘falling in love’ with Amazon’s voice-activated device Alexa.

Rocco, a homeless African grey, keeps using the personal assistant to order his favourite treats, as well kites and light bulbs, and likes to set the mood by playing romantic music.

The clever bird was taken in by the National Animal Welfare Trust’s Berkshire centre earlier this year after he was found as a stray.

But staff member Marion Wischnewski agreed to become his foster parent after he caused a few issues in the Great Shefford office by swearing and throwing his water bowl around.

Ms Wischnewski said fun-loving Rocco enjoys dancing and putting on his favourite tunes.

But thanks to a parental lock on her Amazon account, the attempted purchases have not gone through, The Times reported.

“I’ve come home before and he has romantic music playing,” she said. “He loves to dance and has the sweetest personality.”

African grey parrots are one of the most intelligent bird species. They are capable of building vocabularies of up to 1,000 words or more.

One of the most famous African greys was Alex, who was the subject of a 30-year experiment by animal psychologist Dr Irene Pepperberg in America.

By the time Alex died at the age of 31 in 2007, he could count, identify objects, shapes, colours, and materials, and understood the concepts of bigger, smaller, same and different.

Dr Pepperberg said the parrot had the intelligence level of a five-year-old human and the emotional level of a two-year-old by the time he died, and that he hadn’t reached his full potential.