Amazing Alex! [U1400]

Alex (1976 – September 6, 2007) was an African grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year (1977–2007) experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. The name "Alex" was an acronym for avian language experiment, or avian learning experiment.

Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate 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 of mimicking and the repetition of 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. Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a par with that of dolphins and great apes. She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human, in some respects, and had not even reached his full potential by the time he died. She said that the bird had the emotional level of a human two-year-old at the time of his death.

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's Substage 6 object permanence. 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 words, but was exceptional in that he appeared to have understanding of what he said. For example, when Alex was shown an object and was asked about its shape, color, or material, he could label it correctly. He could describe a key 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 "grey" after being told "grey" six times.

Alex was said to have understood the turn-taking of communication and sometimes the syntax used in language. He called an apple a "banerry" (pronounced as rhyming with some pronunciations of "canary"), which a linguist friend of Pepperberg's thought to be a combination of "banana" and "cherry", 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'd 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 children, 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 "4" as "four". Alex also showed some comprehension of personal pronouns; 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. 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 illusions was similar to human perception.

Pepperberg was training Alex to recognize English graphemes, 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.

Alex died on September 6, 2007 at the age of 31; very young for an Amazon Grey who's average lifespans are generally around 30 years. The cuase of death was anterjosclerosis (hardning of the arteries). His passing was sudden, withut suffering, and his passing could not have been predicted.

Alex's "achievements" are not without criticism. Most of the scientific community remains skeptical of Pepperberg's claims, pointing to operant conditioning; citing Nim Chimpsky (a chimpanzee that was thought to be using language but later findings indicated Nim was merely immitating its trainer) and Clever Hans (a horse that could apparently count until it was revealed that it was receiving subtle cues from its handler). Bird enthusiests around the world, however, observe the behavior of their hookbills and have, for the most part, always insisted that their hookbills have consistently demonstrated un uncanny comprehension of the sounds (words) they use, believing their birds as capable of much more cognitive abilities than simple immitation. There also remains a reproducibility issue with Popperberg's claims; that is, other attempts to replicate Alex's achievements with other Amazon Greys under various trials have not succeeded.

Are our avian friends capable of using language thought possible only in primate brians? Studies and trials will continue; and regardless of whether or not Alex will be responsible for teaching us that avians are capable of more than what we credit them for or not; what remains is this: Alex was a truly amazing little guy and the world is a little worse off without him around!