Friday Grey Matters: The Story of Alex

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Alex is a 28-year-old African Grey parrot who lives in the lab of Irene Pepperberg, in Brandeis University, and is the eqivalent of a superstar in the bird world. Long ago, Dr. Pepperberg chose Alex at a pet store as neither an exceptional nor sub-par bird. Through the years, Dr. Pepperberg has engaged Alex in a complex form of communication, where, much like a parent teaching a child, Alex is taught the proper "name" for an object. Now, he can label more than 100 items, including seven colors, five shapes, counting up to six, and three categories (color, shape, material of an object). This is amazing when you consider that this bird is working with a brain the size of a walnut! In addition, Alex has learned to ask for an item he wants. When the incorrect item is brought, he will either ignore it, or throw it at the person! :) He has learned to say "no" if an item is incorrect, and to tell his handlers when he wants to go back to his cage, or come out.

Here's an example of a test that Dr. Pepperberg might present to Alex: seven items on a tray, of differing colors and shapes. She asks "What shape is green and wood?" (This is the way to ask what is the shape of the object which is green and made of wood?) Amazingly, Alex answers correctly over 80% of the time. This is obviously far more than chance, and operant conditioning also cannot account for it as he answers the same, even to novel researchers. The content of the question, and answer, is understood by this bird. She also might ask, "How many wood?" (How many objects on the tray are made of wood?) He looks at the tray for a few seconds, and then answers with a number, again correct 80% of the time! He can replicate this up to six items.

Alex has also "coined" words, or made up new words to use for unfamilar objects. An example of this is when he first encountered an apple. He already knew the word for "banana" and "strawberry, " and the first time he saw an apple he called it a "bananaberry." This was hypothesized to be because an apple was red like a strawberry by white inside like a banana, so Alex put the two words together to make a new word! He has done this several times, like calling an almond a "cork nut" because of the nut's texture like a cork. He can be inventive and creative.

Stay tuned for the next Grey Matters!

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Cool bird!!!

On a somewhat related aside, has anyone seen anything recent about Susan Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobos? I find research regarding language use in non-human animals fascinating.

It strikes that if Chomsky and evolutionary psychologists are right and there does exist within humans an evolved innate proclivity to grammar and language, there should be some rudimentary language proclivity in other related species.

I've seen Alex on tv before and he is remarkable. I have a 1 1/2 year old Eclectus, and while I don't expect him to ever reach Alex's level of comprehension, even a fraction of that would be thrilling. He's already shown his great mimickry ability and I'm hoping that with time and work he'll get the content of the phrases he repeats.

In truth, from the parrot's point of view, these tricks are probably rather simplistic; they seem to only require rote-learning and little or no problem solving. Is the parrot counting, or simply rote learning the necessary response to well-rehearsed question and a given number of blocks in his field of view? Counting involves abstract thought and basic arithmetic.

I reckon our human chauvinism sometimes clouds our judgement as to what 'intelligence' really is. I'm not a bird enthusiast, but I find it very hard to believe that learning to make sounds that happen to have significance to us (but likely no significance whatsoever to the parrot) when a very basic set of variables is manipulated is actually more complicated than avian courting behaviour, predator evasion, food gathering and nest building.

'Oh look, he can learn to say '3' when there's three wooden blocks on the tray!'

Way to insult the poor bird. I mean, when you've seen a sparrow (with a brain the size of a peanut) perform a perfect reverse immelman, switch into a nose dive and then pull out 6 inches from the ground without breaking speed (a manoeuvre that actually DOES require a small amount of decision making) , in order to avoid a hawk, you have to conclude that maybe coloured blocks and numbers just seem clever to us.

Incitatus, I think you are totally correct! The amount of problem solving ability I've seen Pepper display is staggering sometimes--he is able to coordinate wires and locks to free himself from his cage, but knows to stop doing it when i look over. And even act like he's playing with a toy innocently. :) The thing I really like about these experiments, and why I think Pepperberg chose them, is that parrots exhibit a high degree of flexibility in their "intelligence" and we see some some glimmers of human cogition (or at least some similarities) in the parrot's abilities. One, thats a good way to get a grant funded. Two, the evolution of counting/categories/communication has not been well studied in non-primate chordates. The fact that completely different, divergent brain structures can accomodate some similar tasks is a very interesting clue as to how living things react in and to their environment (and to each other).

I've often seen small brain size raised as an objection to the idea that birds have relatively high intelligence. This argument could be strengthened (to absurdity) by noting that it isn't mere brain size, but neocortex size, that is be the basis of human intelligence. Birds have no neocortex, or any neural tissue that has a similar organization, therefore (this argument would say), they must have no intelligence.

Clearly, however, birds do have some intelligence, and it is based on a neural architecture that differs fundamentally from ours. People experienced in computation will have no difficulty with the idea that different ways of organizing information processing can differ in efficiency by a factor of a thousand or more. The ratio of parrot to human brain size is smaller than this. The argument that birds can't do such-and-such because their brains are small is weak, at best. Quality often trumps quantity.

On the same theme, it is worth noting that birds and bats have an odd similarity in their genomes: less junk. Flying systems do tend to be better optimized for low mass. What is true of genes may be true of brains.