2 . It was late, about 10:15 p. m. Janice Esposito got off the train at Bellport, New York, went to her car and started driving home. She was so familiar with the route that she almost drove automatically. However, when Esposito's car had just crossed the railroad tracks—bam!, it hit another vehicle and was pushed back onto the tracks. Injured but mostly shocked by the crash and by the airbags that popped up, she was stuck in the vehicle.

As it happened, Pete DiPinto was just about to go to sleep when he heard a sharp noise. As a volunteer firefighter, he fetched a flashlight and rushed out without hesitation. “Any firefighter would have done what I did,” he said. “We're always on duty.”

After making sure that the driver was all right, DiPinto discovered Esposito's car straddling the railway tracks. And then he heard the bell ring, which signaled a train's arrival.

DiPinto rushed to Esposito's car and broke the window on the driver's side. Esposito looked up at him, with her eyes glazing over. “I don't know where 1 am,” she said.

“I have to get you off right now!” DiPinto yelled. The train was running toward them at a high speed. The driver's door cannot be opened due to the collision (硬撞), so DiPinto quickly ran to the other side and managed to open the door. He pulled her toward him across the passenger seat until finally got her out to safety. Several seconds later, the train crashed into the vehicle. “It was like a Hollywood movie,” DiPinto told reporters the next day.

“Last night,” said Gregory Miglino Jr, Chief of the Department in South Country Ambulance, “the hero arrived in pajamas (睡衣裤), not in a fire truck.”

5 . Parrots have been known to imitate words, but have you ever thought how they communicate? The sounds they make may sound meaningless to us, but new research has found that wild parrots are actually given names by their parents.

According to a study led by Karl Berg of Cornell University in the US, baby birds are given a unique sound of their own, which stays with them for their entire lives.

In the study, the team placed hidden cameras in the nests of 17 different wild parrots. After studying their sounds, the team identified slight differences in the calls parents used to communicate with each chick. And even before the baby birds had learned to communicate properly, the baby birds seemed to recognize and imitate their calls.

Sounds very similar to humans, doesn’t it?

The study also proved that these signature calls are acquired socially not genetically. To do this, scientists switched the eggs in nine of the 17 nests, so that half of the parrots were raising baby birds that weren’t theirs. Using the recordings, the scientists concluded the baby birds all used names similar to those the parents (whether biological or nonbiological) called them for the first weeks of their lives.

Lucie McNeil, from National Geographic, said, “this would be the first [proven] example of a non-human species teaching acoustical (声学的) communication.”

Lead scientist for the study, Karl Berg told National Public Radio of the US, “Most people say, ‘Well, all those calls are just noise,’ but I think they’re having conversations.”

Fox News also asked Berg what else the parrots might be saying? He replied, “The theory is that these birds are deciding where the food is, ‘Do we want to go 3 km North-Northwest?’ “Do we want to go to that field?’ They are sort of arguing or discussing.”

Natural science author, Virginia Morell, wrote: “Very gradually, scientists are learning to decode the conversations of very different animals that live lives rich with plans, quarrels, and romance.”

You never know, if the science of animal translation keeps advancing, we might one day be watching a reality series about parrots.