A parrot has a question for humans
Years and years ago, there was an aol live chat with Koko, the gorilla who could sign. An early experimental cross species AMA.<p>The crowd mostly asked questions like "is there a god?"<p>The ape generally replied that she was bored and wanted food.<p>Gray parrots and corvids and dolphins and squids are exceptionally fascinating and worth studying. They aren't the same as the mythologized first contact people are hoping for. The precise expectations we have for such an exchange may say something about the Fermi paradox. Very similar intelligences can still be so different as to render communication, a real exchange of ideas, impossible.