JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Alex the Gray Parrot... look at this!

I just learned today about a 31-year old parrot named Alex who learned interactive language during his lifetime. Apparently he passed away last September, and thousands of people sent condolence emails... so he's already famous. Research on his ability to communicate was documented throughout his life, and he has been featured on the Discovery Channel and PBS. He knew well over 50 words and broke preconceived scientific notions about animals and language learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KvPN_Wt8I&feature=related
I was pointed to video of this amazing parrot from another author-friend's blog today, and was so surprised by the footage. In the middle of getting all these answers right, he'd stop and say, "Want lunch. Want a nut."

I found a nice interview with the researcher who started looking into teaching language to birds, Irene Pepperberg, here:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pepperberg03/pepperberg_index.html

Here's a brief quote:
"There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, "just blow us away." We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different ways to make up new words; that is, to demonstrate evidence for segmentation. He babbles at dusk, producing strings like "green, cheen, bean, keen", so we have some evidence for this behavior, but we need more solid data.

Thus we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."

Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers, "Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!" "Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."

Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing. These kinds of things don't happen in the lab on a daily basis, but when they do, they make you realize there's a lot more going on inside these little walnut-sized brains than you might at first imagine."

The rest of the article talks about how this compares to primate language research, and was fascinating.

This article tells more about what Alex could do with his speech, and who Irene Pepperberg is:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all

I know - this doesn't have much to do with music, but I thought it was way cool, and wanted to share Alex's gift with you all.

Linda