PARROTS

 

A bunch of parrots in a jungle overhear an explorer telling a joke. The parrots pass the joke on to the next generation of parrots, who pass it on to the next... but of course, none of the parrots ever actually understand the joke. It keeps on getting passed along from parrot to parrot until another explorer comes through, hears a parrot tell it, and has a good laugh.

The original explorer would be delighted to learn that his joke had provided a laugh to a kindred spirit so many years later, but to the parrots, the laughter is just disruptive: “We’re trying to teach this creature the sacred sequence of sounds passed down to us by our foreparrots, and instead of repeating the sounds back to us properly, it’s making strange hyena noises... perhaps it has a learning disability.”