Bird brain

Scientists who study animals have traditionally underestimated them. Animals can't use tools. When Jane Goodall proved otherwise, others refused to believe it. And when Irene M. Pepperberg proved that Alex, her grey parrot, could communicate by speech, not just repeat words, and even do basic math, she was not immediately believed either.

Pepperberg tells their story in her 2008 book, Alex & Me.

Alex lived a shorter life than most grey parrots, yet it was a spectacular, headline-making life. Amazingly, the author had simply picked him at random among other parrots in a pet shop. She only wanted to examine scientifically just how good these parrots might be at language. One parrot, she thought, was as good as another.

She was trained as a chemist, earning a doctorate, yet had always loved birds and she was drawn to studying them, even though throughout her career she had difficulty finding teaching positions and getting study grants. Her success with Alex even seemed to work against her, as colleagues became jealous of the publicity her work generated.

Even Pepperberg underestimated Alex. Partly this was the result of the nature of science. Behaviors had to be tested over and over again before anything could be proven, yet Alex quickly became bored with repeating the same tests. Often he would simply refuse to cooperate. Or he would come up with something unexpected and clever.

Once when he was frustrated at not being given a nut, Alex said, "Want a nut. Nnn ... uh ... tuh." In effect, he had just spelled the word nut. At another time, he expressed the concept of zero without being taught. Pepperberg writes, "This parrot, with his teeny brain, seems to have come up with a concept that had eluded the great Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria."

Had Alex lived longer and had he been encouraged to learn more than he could with those simple tests he was put through repeatedly, who can say what he might have been capable of?

The author sums up her parrot's contribution to science in this way: "Birds can't learn to label objects, they said. Alex did. OK, birds can't learn to generalize. Alex did. All right, but they can't learn concepts. Alex did. Well, they certainly can't understand 'same' versus 'different.' Alex did. and on and on."