Alex (May 1976 – 6 September 2007)
was a
grey parrot
The grey parrot (''Psittacus erithacus''), also known as the Congo grey parrot, Congo African grey parrot or African grey parrot, is an Old World parrot in the family Psittacidae. The Timneh parrot ''(Psittacus timneh)'' once was identified as ...
and the subject of a thirty-year experiment by
animal psychologist
Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area addr ...
Irene Pepperberg
Irene Maxine Pepperberg (born April 1, 1949) is a scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently a res ...
, initially at the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
and later at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and
Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, pro ...
. When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop.
In her book "Alex & Me", Pepperberg describes her unique relationship with Alex and how Alex helped her understand animal minds. Alex was an
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
for avian language experiment,
or avian learning experiment. He was compared to
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
and at two years old was correctly answering questions made for six-year-olds.
Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large
primate
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...
brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent, as their only common use of communication was mimicking and repeating sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively.
[''Scientific American'' (12 September 2007), An Interview with Alex, the African Grey Parrot. sciam.com. Retrieved 12 September 2007](_blank)
Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a level similar to
dolphin
A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...
s and
great ape
The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the east ...
s. She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human in some respects,
and had not reached his full potential by the time he died.
She believed that he possessed the emotional level of a two-year-old human at the time of his death.
Early life
Animal psychologist
Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area addr ...
Irene Pepperberg
Irene Maxine Pepperberg (born April 1, 1949) is a scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently a res ...
bought Alex at a pet store while working as a researcher at
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...
. She believes that Alex may have had his
wings clipped when he was young, which could have prevented him from learning to fly.
Training
Alex's training used a
model/rival technique, in which the student (Alex) observes trainers interacting. One of the trainers models the desired student behavior, and is seen by the student as a rival for the other trainer's attention. The trainer and model/rival exchange roles so the student can see that the process is interactive. Pepperberg reported that during times when she and an assistant were having a conversation and made mistakes, Alex would correct them.
This technique helped Pepperberg succeed with Alex where other scientists had failed in facilitating two-way communication with parrots. In later years, Alex sometimes assumed the role of one of Pepperberg's assistants by acting as the "model" and "rival" in helping to teach a fellow parrot in the lab.
Alex sometimes practiced words when he was alone.
Accomplishments
Pepperberg did not claim that Alex could use "language", instead saying that he used a two-way communications code.
Listing Alex's accomplishments in 1999, Pepperberg said he could identify 50 different objects and recognize quantities up to six; that he could distinguish seven colors and five shapes, and understand the concepts of "bigger", "smaller", "same", and "different", and that he was learning "over" and "under".
Alex passed increasingly difficult tests measuring whether humans have achieved
Piaget Piaget () may refer to:
People with the surname
* Édouard Piaget (18171910), a Swiss entomologist
* Jean Piaget (18961980), a Swiss developmental psychologist
* Paul Piaget (disambiguation), several people
* Solange Piaget Knowles (born 1986) ...
's Substage 6
object permanence
Object permanence is the understanding that Physical object, objects continue to Existence, exist even when they cannot be Sense, sensed. This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology ...
. Alex showed surprise and anger when confronted with a nonexistent object or one different from what he had been led to believe was hidden during the tests.
Alex had a vocabulary of over 100
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s,
[Benedict Carey (10 September 2007)]
"Alex, a Parrot Who Had a Way With Words, Dies"
''The New York Times''. Retrieved 11 September 2007. but was exceptional in that he appeared to have understanding of what he said. For example, when Alex was shown an object and asked about its shape, color, or material, he could label it correctly.
He could describe a
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
as a key no matter what its size or color, and could determine how the key was different from others.
Looking at a mirror, he said "what color", and learned the word "grey" after being told "grey" six times.
This made him the first and only non-human animal to have ever asked a question, let alone an existential one (Apes who have been trained to use sign-language have so far failed to ever ask a single question).
Alex's ability to ask questions, as well as to answer to Pepperberg's questions with his own questions, is documented in numerous articles and interviews.
Alex was said to have understood the
turn-taking
Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning ...
of communication and sometimes the syntax used in language.
He called an
apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
a "banerry" (pronounced as rhyming with some pronunciations of "canary"), which a linguist friend of Pepperberg's thought to be a combination of "
banana
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...
" and "
cherry
A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit).
Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The nam ...
", two fruits he was more familiar with.
Alex could add, to a limited extent, correctly giving the number of similar objects on a tray. Pepperberg said that if he could not count, the data could be interpreted as his being able to estimate quickly and accurately the number of something, better than humans can.
When he was tired of being tested, he would say "Wanna go back", meaning he wanted to go back to his cage, and in general, he would request where he wanted to be taken by saying "Wanna go ...", protest if he was taken to a different place, and sit quietly when taken to his preferred spot. He was not trained to say where he wanted to go, but picked it up from being asked where he would like to be taken.
If the researcher displayed irritation, Alex tried to defuse it with the phrase, "I'm sorry." If he said "Wanna banana", but was offered a nut instead, he stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or took the nut and threw it at the researcher or otherwise displayed annoyance, before requesting the item again. When asked questions in the context of research testing, he gave the correct answer approximately 80 percent of the time.
Once, Alex was given several different colored blocks (two red, three blue, and four green—similar to the picture above). Pepperberg asked him, "What color three?" expecting him to say blue. However, as Alex had been asked this question before, he seemed to have become bored. He answered "five!" This kept occurring until Pepperberg said "Fine, what color five?" Alex replied "none". This was said to suggest that parrots, like humans, get bored. Sometimes, Alex answered the questions incorrectly, despite knowing the correct answer.
Preliminary research also seems to indicate that Alex could carry over the concept of four blue balls of wool on a tray to four notes from a piano. Pepperberg was also training him to recognize the symbol "4" as "four". Alex also showed some comprehension of
personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s; he used different language when referring to himself or others, indicating a concept of "I" and "you".
In July 2005, Pepperberg reported that Alex understood the concept of
zero
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation
Positional notation (or place-value notation, or positional numeral system) usually denotes the extension to any base of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (or ...
. If asked the difference between two objects, he also answered that; but if there was no difference between the objects, he said "none", which meant that he understood the concept of nothing or zero.
In July 2006, Pepperberg discovered that Alex's perception of
optical illusion
Within visual perception, an optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by a visual perception, percept that arguably appears to differ from reality. Illusions come in a wide v ...
s was similar to human perception.
Pepperberg was training Alex to recognize
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...
s, in the hope that he would conceptually relate an English written word with the spoken word. He could identify sounds made by two-letter combinations such as SH and OR.
Death
Alex's death on 6 September 2007, at age 31,
came as a surprise, as the average life span for a grey parrot in captivity is 45 years.
His last words ("You be good, I love you. See you tomorrow.") were the same words that he would say every night when Pepperberg left the lab.
[ ]
Criticisms
Some academics are skeptical of Pepperberg's findings, asserting without data or peer-reviewed publication concerning Alex's data, that Alex's communications is
operant conditioning
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where behaviors are modified through the association of stimuli with reinforcement or punishment. In it, operants—behaviors that affect one's environment—are c ...
.
Nim Chimpsky
Neam "Nim" Chimpsky (November 19, 1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee and the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University. The project was led by Herbert S. Terrace with the linguistic analysis head ...
, a chimpanzee, was thought to be using language, but there is some debate over whether he simply imitated his teacher.
Herbert Terrace, who worked with Nim Chimpsky, says he thinks Alex performed by
rote rather than by using language; without peer-reviewed publication he claims Alex's responses are "a complex discriminating performance", adding that he believes that in every situation, "there is an external stimulus that guides his response."
See also
References
External links
Alex FoundationObituary articleat the web-site of ''The Economist'' magazine
"The Language of Birds"article includes a transcript an
audio sampleof Alex
*
''Wired'': Parrot Proves It's No Birdbrain*
Life with Alex: a memoir' Film tribute to Alex.
* {{Find a Grave, 24163338
1976 animal births
2007 animal deaths
Animal intelligence
Individual parrots
Individual talking birds
Psittacini
Individual animals in the United States
ceb:Alex, Haute-Savoie