So I just finished reading this book: “Alex and Me”, by Irene Pepperberg. It was an insightful read, to say the least. Here’s what I learned.

For the longest time, ‘birdbrain’ has been used as a pejorative. Turns out, Grey parrots — non-primate, non-mammalian creatures with brains the size of a shelled walnut — have cognitive and linguistic skills on par with those of large-brained mammalian chimps and 5-year old human toddlers. Huh.

What could Alex, the particular bird in question, do? What could Alex do?

• Label objects and colours
• Had a functional use of ‘no’.
• Could add, at least upto six with 85%+ accuracy
• Understood the concept of zero, or none.
  • E.g., “What color five? None.” — this was Alex’s answer to which coloured quantity is five in number.
• Understood that color and shape were categories and not simply labels by themselves and hence could answer ‘what color’ and ‘what shape’
• Performed lexical elision: put two different words together to form a new word.
  • E.g., called an apple ‘banerry’ — tastes like a banana (to Alex) + looks like a cherry
• Understood what he was saying, i.e., seemed to have the ability to comprehend
  • If he said ‘want grape’ and you gave him a banana, he would spit it out and repeat the request. If any child did this, you would readily agree that they really wanted a grape and not a banana, right?
• Would get bored and fool around — suggestive of sophisticated cognitive processes
  • When presented a silver object, he would say names of all the colours he knew except the correct color — statistically highly unlikely.
  • When asked how many objects when there two, he went ‘One four one four’ … when put back in his cage as a punishment … ‘two, two, I’m sorry, come here!’
• Was entitled and expected people to follow his orders.
  • Would not pull a string up to get food, would order someone to get it for him. Other Greys who didn’t have as good a command of labels and requesting would pull up the string themselves.

Watch Alex in action in this cool YouTube clip!

Dr Pepperberg, the scientist conducting these studies, says that over time, defenders of the “humans are unique” doctrine have been moving the goalposts of what constitutes intelligent behaviour^{^}. Using tools -> making tools -> using language. And now it turns out that a non-primate, non-mammal creature with a walnut-sized brain can learn elements of communication like large-brained mammals.

We are a part of nature, not apart from nature. The ’separateness’ is a dangerous illusion that led us to exploit every aspect of the natural — animals, plants, minerals — without consequences. We are now facing the consequences.

There is also some cool research on how these African Grey parrots help each other out!

Check out the book, and my Goodreads review.

^{^ I’ve written about this as well.}