November 10, 2022 • 40 mins
Picked at random from a pet store, a humble grey parrot named Alex went on to fundamentally alter the way humans think about animal cognition. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore how animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg and her parrot pal Alex spent three decades proving it's actually pretty impressive to be 'bird brained.'
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio Coca,
(00:28):
Be good, I love you. Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks
again for tuning in. Let's give it up for our
super producer, Max Freight Train Williams Coca. Indeed, they call
me Ben Joint as always with the one and only
Mr Noel Brown. No, I gotta tell you we talked
(00:50):
about it off air. We talked about it off air,
my man. Thank you so much personally, personally, thank you
so much for doing this episode. Well you're welcome. Hold on, sorry,
I just had to hear that real quick. It's a
fun sound um made by tiny Japanese toy you know.
(01:11):
Bed you might have noticed my lackluster coca. I'm not.
I'm fascinated by this topic. But I may have alluded
in the past that I have a certain phobia towards
avian creatures. Um and the big talking ones with the
big thick tree trunk claws. Those are the ones that
(01:32):
pure nightmare fuel for me. Don't want them, don't need them.
I'm sure they're lovely to some folks, you know, if
you know, the doctor Doolittles of the world out there
have have at um, not for me. And the idea
that these these creatures, these these parrots, you know, could
in fact be intelligent enough to like swoop down and
(01:55):
have a chat with me, um extra nightmare fuel or
maybe it make it better? Do you make it more? Pa?
I don't know. You know, that's a good question. We'll
discover the answer here. Yeah. They usually uh, in my experience, uh,
higher birds of a higher intelligence, often outside of of
Corvid's birds of a higher intelligence, will often choose one
(02:19):
pet giant, one person that is their person. I've had
experiences with highly intelligent birds outside of the Corvid world,
both positive and negative, to be sure. And this is
something that's really close to myself to you for some
(02:40):
negative reasons. And of course to our research associate, doctor Zach.
One night over seep Top, a doctor appeared. But this
is no normal doctor. Who's there. It's Zack Zach who
the doctor named Zach And he's here to Billiard stress,
(03:03):
Jessica College pett Is cat teacher, history books at this stuff.
Let's go with other things. Yeah, how'll work Zack who
earned that nickname, by the way, folks, And uh, And
(03:26):
today we're gonna talk about a creature, a bird, a
gray parrot named Alex, who is often called the most
intelligent avian on record. The story starts in there's this
person named Irene Pepperberg. Awesome name, uh. Irene Pepperberg is
(03:49):
an animal psychologist and adopts one year old African gray
parrot named Alex. No. Pepperberg was a researcher at Perdue
University at the time, and she was studying something that
you know continually fascinates me man, animal cognition. Right, the
(04:09):
definition of intelligence? Does that elephant recognize itself in the mirror?
Does the dolphin feel lost? Does the canine experience love? Joy, uh,
jealousy or envy? Technically these are questions that humans have
grappled with forever and ever, by which I mean just that,
(04:32):
you know, the dawn of human history and all at
the very least sense, like you know, the first Disney
movie with anthromy morphizes talking celebrity voiced animals. You know,
it's certainly an easy thing for the mind to do.
As we as humans tend to be a little bit
self centered, we I think, assume that all other living
creatures see and experience the world in the same way
(04:53):
that we do. Yeah, and this is something we're talking
about off air. This is one of the things that
fascinates me. First off, the h and the human uh
fad on Earth still doesn't have a workable definition of
what intelligence is, what it means. And there are a
lot of assumptions throughout, you know, the majority of human
(05:15):
history that non human animals are less intelligent. Right, And
then the pendulum swung to the point where uh, scientists
were saying, hey, animals, certain animals do seem to be
quite intelligent by these various metrics we can produce. But
(05:38):
are they is it the same sort of intelligence? Right?
What is the difference between sentience and sapiens? These are
the questions Pepperberg is tackling in this amazing story. Up
until she partnered up with Alex the parrot, most people
believe that birds were kind of ummies, you know, that
(06:01):
they had evolutionarily sacrificed a lot of stuff for the
ability to fly, and that they you know, the the
idea was that, Okay, look a parent, a mina bird,
maybe a corvidd They can make noises, a starling even
can make noises that sound like uh. They are responsive
(06:23):
and cognizant of a conversation. But they're really just mimicking you.
And that's that's one of the big questions about the
story of Alex, the so called most intelligent Avian. M hmm, yeah,
I mean we'll get into this to what it also
does bring into question the whole idea of even our
(06:43):
intelligence and like does intelligence Do intelligence and language necessarily
mean the same thing? Like, um, we can we we
learn language through mimicry as well, you know, when we're
when we're babies, and we get gradually more and more
adept at it as we keep being surrounded by the
those sources that we then kind of internalize, and then
you know, language sort of takes on a life of
(07:04):
its own based on sort of set rules. I would argue,
I've never really seen a parrot go from being able to,
you know, recite back some sort of catchphrase to just
all of a sudden speaking in complete thoughts and sentences. Um,
but I don't know, Maybe Pepperberg will will prove me
wrong there. But let's do start with Alex stands for
a thing. It's an acronym which we love. Here a
(07:25):
ridiculous history Avian language experiment or Avian learning experiment. Pepperberg
decided to work with the gray, the African gray, not
the Norwegian blue, which is dead already. And because the
monty pythons, uh, African gray partly because um, they have
clear uh the avin ability to kind of vocalize um,
(07:48):
with a certain amount of clarity um quote unquote again
uh and they are known for their abilities to quote
unquote talk. So currently these are actually also endangered for
it's by the way, at the time, um So at
this point she had three of the endangered birds as subjects,
one of which was Alex the star of our show.
(08:09):
Here and this lovely Wired article from two thousand five
pulls a quote from Pepperberg saying, um, they don't have
the same rock Polly Wanna cracker type of vocalizations that
some other parents do. So they're a little bit more
smooth operators, you know, a little bit more of like
that radio voice comes to parents. Well, I wouldn't quite
(08:33):
call them quiet storm. But let's let's let's play a
clip so everybody can get a sense of this. We're
just gonna give you a little taste of Alex the parrot,
not Alex Williams, who can post our track and Noel
next maybe we can react to this. Uh. First test
(08:54):
would be can you tell which voice is the human
which voices the bird? That's an easy one. Second, would love,
would love to hear reactions? All right, here we go.
This is from an experiment where it Alex is commenting
on objects that he is shown by his human friend.
(09:17):
WHOA that's right? How many? Child? That's right? You're a good? No, No,
you can't go back yet, nightmarish mark. It's like a demon.
(09:38):
So we will Uh, well it did there? Thank you.
So we hear Alex indicating a number of objects, right,
how many responds to uh? And he keeps asking or
(09:58):
he keeps saying I want to go back like he
he wants to Uh, he's kind of bored, right, one
could say if we're anthropomorphizing, and then what else does
he do? He asked for water, which might just be
him stalling. What what are your what are your thoughts?
You know, like to tell you're a little creeped out.
I want to go back to hell. Send me back
(10:20):
to Hell. I mean, it's just it's like backwards talk.
It's the kind of thing you hear you play exactly.
It's like yes, Black Lodge led Zeppelin demonic masking kind of.
I'm sorry, I'm really not joking here. That triggers me.
That voice is terrifying. It's not cute, it's not unnatural.
(10:42):
And I know why it makes sense that it's unnatural,
because it's not meant to form those types of of
of of syllables, those types of sounds. It feels unnatural,
feels it does to me. Yes, it does. Um, it's
like auto tune, but not as sexy. And uh, we're
gonna pull some statements from a June fifto article that
(11:08):
Dr Pepperberg herself wrote, where she says she recalls how
she how she starts hanging out with Alex. She says
that she was sitting across from Alex gray parent and uh,
it's year old, and he seems kind of nervous. And
(11:28):
she says, we're in a really small room in this
basement at the Department of Biological Sciences. They're at Purdue.
And she said, I thought, and I believe that parents
were smart and I could use a training technique, which
was revolutionary at the time, to change the way the
world thought about a bird brain. And as Pepperberg recalls,
(11:49):
a lot of people didn't take her seriously at this time.
She even says a friend once jokingly said her path
was littered with the remains of those who said it
couldn't be done. Well, I've never thought that birds were stupid. Okay,
they freaked me out, um, but I think that's actually
(12:12):
because they're quite attuned to their surroundings and their movements
are very quick in their their response times are incredibly fast.
I think that's partly what's always freaked me out about them.
But if you look at the way birds like Migraine,
they almost have like this esp thing going on the
way they that with the murmurings and all of that,
like where they you know, move in these crazy arrays.
(12:34):
I've never thought birds were stupid. And you know, like Ben,
your fascination with corvids and their ability to kind of
remember faces and you know, seek out objects and give
gifts and all that stuff. So I mean, I'm leaning
in a little bit to my my terror surrounding this topic,
but I really do truly think the birds. Possibly one
of the reasons I'm freaked out by them is they
possess some kind of otherworldly intelligence quote unquote, or just
(12:57):
a sensory perception. You know, I'll be honest, with you. Uh,
you're not alone. There A lot of people in fact
feel that way about children who also seem to have
uncanny powers. Max is raising his hand, you know, not
for nothing, are creepy kids a mainstay of horror fiction.
(13:19):
So this is weird because history hinges on such small things.
Alex was picked out of random from a group of
ten gray parents in a regular garden variety pet store,
so it's quite possible that a civilian could have picked
up Alex, and this entire experiment may have gone a
(13:41):
different direction. Pepperberg starts out with volunteers, some undergraduates, et Perdue,
some high school volunteers, and what she calls some other
faculty wives who were determined to help me make more
of a place for myself at the university than they
had managed. So this was crowdsourced. Everybody was interested, even
(14:06):
if they didn't necessarily think there would be substantive science here.
They thought, let's give it a go, and this went
against a lot of established protocol. Pepperberg had to get
the dean to agree to let her get a federal
grant or submit one, despite the fact that she was
(14:28):
not a appointed to the faculty, and then she talks
a little bit about her her predecessors. The folks were
informed this work, folks like Deepmer told that's Deepmer told
t o DT, who published an article about how he
(14:52):
had once trained a gray parent to do a duet
with him. And this was considered, in Pepperberg's mind, the
first state in two way communication, which introduces the model
slash rival observational learning technique that she used with Alex
the parrot. You know what toad means in German? What
(15:13):
does total mean in German? Well, the tea is a
little bit of an anachronistic spelling. And then I may
be overthinking this, but it means dead like to to
if someone is told them they are, they have they
have died, they've expired, doctor dead, dr died like kind
of kind of interesting. So Pepperberg essentially began to train
(15:35):
Alex along with an assistance um. They took on the
roles of kind of you know, presenting behavior for Alex
to model. They would experiment with different numbers of objects
and and colors and and things like that, and of
course it was you know, at this point, kind of
a conditioning or you know, kind of situation where they
(15:57):
would reward the bird with with praise or treats or whatever.
If the the desired behavior was was modeled correctly well,
which again like this is the earliest stages, right of
the training so or of the experiment. So whether it
continues to be just wrote memorization or training is kind
(16:18):
of tb D at this point. But at this at
this point they really just kind of starting to get
their heads around how do we train a parent to
like do human like tasks? Yeah, exactly. And this this
goes to the root of some of the criticism, as
we'll see. So if Alex answers correctly and identifies this
(16:40):
object or some aspect of it in a way the
uh the experimenters are hoping, then he gets praised. But
here's the tricky thing. If he answers incorrectly, he gets scolded.
That makes me wonder about you know, doctor did teaching
his teaching his parrot the duet? Is he is he
(17:02):
going guitar you? That is an e flat m uh? Also,
how does one scold a parrot? You know, you know
your body shamed, the wave a naughty finger at it.
It's kind of like, mmmm, that's a bad parrot. What
I like to do with my cats, is I I
(17:23):
just hold up my thumbs and I'm like, this is
why I'm in charge. I never forget. I am the
door knob, I run the But like you know, I'm
surprised that it was that they're talking about. It was
scolding instead of withholding, you know, a trink or something.
So I'm wondering, like, is it I mean for it
(17:45):
to even register to me with it, with it, with
a creature like this, it would have to inflict some
amount of pain or unpleasantness, you know, I just don't know.
I want to know more about the scolding behavior right
right net to v positive reinforcement. So this is part
of some of the criticism you'll see. But just as
(18:07):
we outline the process here model rival aspects, then after
he answers correctly or incorrectly, the assistant and the trainer
reverse their roles. This teaches, hopefully that language is a
two way street, so that Alex should understand he can
(18:29):
respond to questions when posed by any human, not just
the trainer. They're hoping to break through the idea of
a bird bonding with just one person, right, and it
seems that this met with success. Alex began to understand
the concept of two way communication. And this is a
(18:52):
this is a funny part. You gotta love this, even
if you don't love birds. Alex gets such a grasp
on this that he's starts interjecting. And if Pepperberg and
her assistants make mistakes, he's the one who's like orange
or whatever. And I think that's that's really cool. But Pepperberg,
(19:15):
being a scientist, also takes pains to note that, yes,
Alex seemed to be extraordinarily intelligent in the worlds of parrots,
but was not speaking language in the same way that
humans do. Not to mention, uh fabulous. All that is
(19:35):
interesting article by Amy lamrow Um that points out actually
has some really good video on it as well, if
you want to check that one out. All That is
Interesting Um points out that Pepperberg believed or concluded that
Alex was actually able to comprehend some pretty abstract concepts.
(19:57):
Also recognize the specificity of questions, um not just you
know that classical conditioning kind of Pavlovian response kind of
situation where you're essentially just training a creature to do
a thing based on a stimulus. A stimuli rather which
is involuntary you know at that point, like the salivating
(20:17):
you know, um for the ringing bell or whatever. This
would be more like what they would have done with
the skinner box. And like training what is it pigeons
and such spen or chickens to like pack a certain
number to solve a math problem. A lot of those things,
we know, we're used as part of kind of Huxbury
sort of circus tricks, you know, to to convince people
(20:40):
if this was an intelligent chicken by literally training it
to do a thing. Yeah, behaviorism, behavioralism. But this parrot, Alex,
seems to be a bit of cut above, uh, those examples.
At least according to Pepperburg, there were some you know,
ability to comprehend some of these more abstract kind of
(21:02):
niche subjects, to the point where I believe she ascribed
kind of a mental intelligence to the creature that would
be somewhere in line with like a small child, Yeah,
like a two year old human, a dolphin, a chimpanzee,
or uh the leafblower guy who must get an alert
(21:22):
on his phone whenever we're recording. So Alex does things
that seem emotional, right, that seems as though he is
frustrated I want to point to a great article by
Denizia Smith in the New York Times, I Thinking Bird
or just Another Bird Brain. It outlines some of the
(21:42):
difficulties of objectively measuring the intelligence of something that you
come to think of as an intelligent human child that
happens to have wings or it's on that level. So
one of the telling things that is in that all
That's interesting article as well as the New York Times article,
(22:04):
when they're telling things that he would do that it
seems to exhibit emotional intelligence, is he would play sometimes
just for fun, the way that Corvid's chimpanzees and even
elephants do in the wild, an octopus under the sea
as well. He would also get frustrated, or appear to
get frustrated if he was done with a test or
(22:25):
if he was bored, he would say I'm sorry, or
he would slam his cage door. He would throw stuff
in frustration. He was a bit of a diva at times.
And yeah, we heard on that clip that you played
too band, I want to go back, drag me back
to hell. You know, when I was I was joking
(22:46):
about you know, it is a moment where several times
it's like I want to go back, and then the
researcher said, no, you can't go back. We've got to
do more stuff. But I think the implication there is
like I'm I'm I'm bored at this, this this shenanig,
shenanig me, you know, put me back in my house.
I want to I want to lap up water with
my weird black tongue. Hell for a bird, if it
(23:10):
has a concept of health, is probably being in a
basement and being experimented on and not being able to
fly free. And Pepperberg wanted to fly free with her
research segue Uh. She talks about how her first grant
did get a response. The response was what are you smoking?
(23:34):
She did not get any money, and that that is
kind of a quote that's from her her earlier statement
that we quoted. But she didn't give up. She sent
a second grant in and she got what she said
was a tiny bit of money for a year just
to see what she could accomplish, and she accomplished a lot.
Let's go to Diana Rice, psychologist at Hunter College, also
(23:58):
works in animal cognition with dolphins and elephants in particular,
and she calls this work revolutionary. But just like Pepperberg herself,
other scientists in the field are cautioning against saying Alex's
abilities are human. They say, look, the guy learned to
(24:21):
communicate and basic expressions, but he didn't show logic and
the ability to generalize that a two year old human
child wood. That's David Primac, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at
the University of Pennsylvania. He says, there's no evidence of
her cursive logic. Without that, you can't work with digital
(24:42):
numbers or more complex human grammar. And to be clear,
Alex never did a ted talk, you know what I mean.
He wasn't ever out there like lecturing people or prosecuting
a case in court. But to your point earlier, ban,
I mean, this wasn't exactly uh, the research gods were
(25:03):
not exactly smiling upon this union. Let us say, right,
it was a very scrappy existence. In order to keep
funding required moving around, you know, to various you know,
temp kind of positions and and and professor ships or
adjunct kind of things. You know. So this really was
a a labor of love and something that that Pepperberg
(25:25):
was very passionate about. And it wasn't necessarily like I mean,
maybe the big picture, maybe there's someone that had vision
and was like, Okay, this is gonna be worth it
in thirty years, but for now, it's a very scrappy existence,
like kept losing grant money and then you know, to
your point Ben about what what is she smoking? Often
just treated with scorn and bullied in certain ways by
(25:46):
colleagues and in contemporaries. Yeah, but Alex was good at
identifying stuff. His vocabulary was pretty creme de la creme
as parrot speech goes. But he was even better at
identifying colors and objects and doing a little bit of math,
(26:14):
as we see in the Vintage News and also from
Dr Pepperberg herself. He could give a precise description whim
prompted about the shape, color, or material of a certain object.
And he had an active memory. So after he learned
the name of a certain object, key, coin, caesadilla, whatever,
(26:38):
he would, he would be able to identify that object,
even if it were in different shapes or colors. So
one example, like going back to keys, he would see
different types of keys, you know what I mean, Like
think of the old idea to kind of like little
little little plastic e oversized colored keys he might give
(27:00):
to a toddler on a ring to practice fine motor
skills or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, think of platonic ideals, right,
Like when you hear the word chair, you think of
many different versions of a chair, but you could always
identify it as a chair. That's a human thing. And
people thought, and Alex appears to have that ability himself,
(27:26):
and he did. He did something massive. He was in
front of a mirror and he recognized himself and he
learned what color his plumage was. He learned he was gray.
They told him, you know, that's you, buddy, that's you.
(27:47):
That's what you look like. He is one of the
very very few animals that has posed a question about itself,
its appearance, its existence, you know, in this sort of manner.
This is monumental. You know. Self awareness is a huge thing,
and honestly a lot of humans haven't cracked it, you
(28:08):
know what I mean. It's a glasshouse situation, that's right.
And even like a concept like um infinity, you know,
or zero for example, those are kind of abstract concepts
like you know, we can we can look at things
that are there and say there are like five things
there or whatever. But but to to be presented with
nothing and and and quantify it as something that that
(28:32):
that requires some some meta cognition, like we like to
talk about, you know, thinking about thinking, because what do
you mean there's nothing there? What do you call that? Well,
it's it's zero. But also the difference between zero and
infinity are more related than one, my thing. So at
this point Alex can identify fifty different objects. He knows colors,
he knows shapes, um, he understands some of those higher
(28:54):
level meta cognitive concepts. Uh Pepperberg calls a zero concept. Right.
Pepperberg has never in her career heard of a bird
being able to wrap their you know, bird brains around them.
I'm not saying brains is a pejoraty of here. I'm
just saying it is the brain of a bird. Back
in two thousand four, she was working on a number
(29:17):
comprehension study. Alex could look at a tray of green
and blue balls and blocks and then tell Pepperberg how
many of the objects were not only blue, but we're
blue blocks. This is combining you know, shape and color
in a in a way that's seemingly not just that
(29:38):
rope memorization. Yeah, yeah, And then she did something pretty impressive.
After they went back and forth on this trial of
counting and then also categorizing by color, she said he
might be giving some wrong answers because he keeps interrupting
(29:59):
gas for grapes, bananas, their toys. He might just be bored.
So she did this. She flipped the script a little
bit and she said, okay, Smarty, what color five? And
when she asked this, it was a trick question. She
knew there were not five objects of the same color
on the tray, and he said none. He didn't come
(30:20):
up with this word on his own. Pepperberg says he
knew it in that sense of absence we discussed earlier,
because he's been involved in studies on determining differences and
similarities between objects. But the use of none in this
case is novel and unique. And this speaks directly to
criticisms people have where they say, look, did the did
(30:43):
the bird really recognize himself in the mirror or did
he just happen to coincidentally just squawk some stuff that
seemed relevant impertinent at the time. So Pepperberg, no, she's
onto something. She starts mixing in this is going back
to the Wired article. She starts mixing in questions where
(31:07):
the answer would have to be none, and she gets
similar results. This gets published in the Journal of Comparative
Psychology in May two thousand five. And this is not
even getting to the super fascinating part yet. So we said,
Alex is illuminary. You know, he is a Nicola tesla
(31:28):
amongst the world of parrots. So you gotta get another parrot,
right if you want to do some real science. Yeah,
there we go. So she gets this other great parrot.
This parrot's name is Griffin, and she wants to see
if Griffin can associate sound sequences with quantities. So, as
every human listener knows, I just clicked my fingers three
(31:51):
times right click, click, click, so Pepperbird does something similar.
She plays two clicks, and she's hoping Griffin will come
in and say like true, But he doesn't say a thing.
The guys stone faced, he's totally en her. And uh.
Then she does two war clicks and Alex, who was
(32:12):
in the same room, just pops off and he's like four.
And then she has two more clicks. He goes six.
She says she looked at him and said, you want
to do an addition, you know, you want to do
some math. Fine, now, isn't this kind of what was
happening with that horse situation with clever Hans the horse,
they were like clippity clops, He would answer, I mean,
(32:34):
obviously horses can't talk, so the only way Hans could
respond to these math problems to clop his little horse hoof.
But a big part of the demonstration of that horse
was simple mathematics. Yeah. Yeah, And in that case, uh, Hans,
God love him is responding to most likely unconscious cues
(32:58):
from his human But right, and that's a big question here,
knowing that parents do have a range of cognitive skills.
Is Alex simply watching, listening for cues, and slotting in
what feels like a correct response without really understanding that
(33:19):
four plus two equals six. These are good questions, um
Alex learned for pepper Burke too correctly put the numbers
one through eight in order using multicolored refrigerator magnets. And
then she says he on his own learned to equate
(33:41):
those symbols with the appropriate number of objects. So think
of three things, right, and then think of the number
three and everybody using non Roman numerals is probably using Arabic,
right those that's where modern number symbols come from. Numerical symbols.
(34:01):
So Alex was able to look at just three regular things,
whether their keys, coins, slices of casey da, sorry, last time, promise,
and then immediately if you that can immediately equate that
with the written symbol three, that's pretty impressive. Uh. You know,
(34:21):
if we put the critics to one side, and you know,
this is obviously a very ambitious long term study. September six,
two thousand seven, Alex Uh and Pepperberg look their last
looks and squawk their last squawks at each other. She
(34:42):
says that they went through their good night ritual. Try
to assume involved a kiss on the cheek, a little
tuck in perhaps, Um, you're thinking of the dolphin LSD experiment.
This is a family show. That's right, as a family show.
I looked that one up. If you want, you want
to get on a list of some kind um, it's
(35:04):
the thing. Um. But yeah, she said that these these
rituals would vary slightly. Uh. And this time she told
him it was time to go to the cage, and
the birds said you'd be good. Oh, we're good. I
love you. It actually sounded less creepy your impression. But
(35:26):
do we do we have a clip of this, Let's know,
not the final the final squawk. Surely this is a
tender moment between friends. Yep, we have it. Oh my gosh.
Well let's hear it. I'll try. I'll try my impression again, cook,
and we'll see what it actually sounds like. You be good,
(35:48):
I love you. All right, So we're gonna play a
clip here of one of their nightly routines, and he
and Ireen continued the night. He teen, I love you,
I love you. I'm trying. So that's an example of
(36:13):
of their good night routine, which seems oddly wholesome. You
know what's kind of pis are it is? And honestly,
at this point too, I feel like the bird's voice
is a little less shaky and creepy sounding than it
was when it started, you know, I think it's gotten
better and intoning and the kind of mimicking a little
bit more of an I'm sorry. Look all you bird
lovers out there who are cursing my name, I get it.
(36:36):
It's just it's I hope, but I didn't mean to
make it sound like the Exorcist voice or anything, you know,
that was very wholesome. Man and Picks are like, you're right.
So a year after the the the thirty years in
question that was supposed to be the tenure of this study,
Alex was gone. Mm hmm yeah. Why why wasn't that
(37:01):
enough time to fully understand, you know, whether this stuff
is real or not? Because it still seems like the
jury is kind of outben Well, it's partially due to um,
it's partially due to competing opinions about animal cognition, and
also also one criticism people will levy this not us.
(37:23):
This is criticism that gets brought up in the scientific community.
They'll say, hey, this one person and their team spent
three decades with this one instance of the gray parrot, right,
and so maybe they started putting out signals that they
were not aware of. Maybe they I mean, they certainly
(37:46):
emotionally bonded. Pepperberg says that she was devastated when Alex
passed away, unfortunately about fifteen years younger than most parts
and captivity. But what this teaches us, this amazing story,
whether you hate birds or you love them and wish
you could turn into a bird wherever you are in
(38:07):
the spectrum. What this shows us is that there is
still a lot to be learned about the living world
and about the other animals that we are so fortunate
to spend time with today. I would say personally, I
don't have them. I don't have the emotional space to
(38:30):
have a parrot roommate, you know what I mean. I
would like it to be more of an indoor outdoor cat.
But we also know that in in ancient native communities,
people were well aware of the tendencies. They also befriended
uh these animals and respected their intelligence. And there's still
(38:50):
so much to learn. The more we learn about the
intelligence of other non human animals, the more humans learn
about themselves, which is quite a beautiful thing. Agreed um
so hughes thanks to research Associate Zachary Dr zach Williams
(39:10):
Um for finding this topic and giving us something to
chew on. Um like a like a weird hooked, beaked,
winged creature might chew on a stick of seeds. You know,
it's the thing they like, they seem to like and
huge preemptive, proactive thanks to all our fellow ridiculous Historians
(39:33):
who will be visiting the Ridiculous Historians Facebook page. Post
your favorite funny, wholesome or creepy examples of Avian intelligence.
We love to see them. Big thanks to Mr Max Williams,
first of his name, uh big, Thanks of course, as
always to our favorite part Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister,
(39:57):
who else who else? Big? Thanks Deves, Jeff Go, Chris
rossi Otis uh big. Thanks to you Know no man
right back at you, and Max. Thanks to you for
for all your gentle and approving faces you've been making.
I've really felt seen on this one. Be good. We'll
see you tomorrow. Until next time. For more podcasts for
(40:26):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio Coca,
(00:28):
Be good, I love you. Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks
again for tuning in. Let's give it up for our
super producer, Max Freight Train Williams Coca. Indeed, they call
me Ben Joint as always with the one and only
Mr Noel Brown. No, I gotta tell you we talked
(00:50):
about it off air. We talked about it off air,
my man. Thank you so much personally, personally, thank you
so much for doing this episode. Well you're welcome. Hold on, sorry,
I just had to hear that real quick. It's a
fun sound um made by tiny Japanese toy you know.
(01:11):
Bed you might have noticed my lackluster coca. I'm not.
I'm fascinated by this topic. But I may have alluded
in the past that I have a certain phobia towards
avian creatures. Um and the big talking ones with the
big thick tree trunk claws. Those are the ones that
(01:32):
pure nightmare fuel for me. Don't want them, don't need them.
I'm sure they're lovely to some folks, you know, if
you know, the doctor Doolittles of the world out there
have have at um, not for me. And the idea
that these these creatures, these these parrots, you know, could
in fact be intelligent enough to like swoop down and
(01:55):
have a chat with me, um extra nightmare fuel or
maybe it make it better? Do you make it more? Pa?
I don't know. You know, that's a good question. We'll
discover the answer here. Yeah. They usually uh, in my experience, uh,
higher birds of a higher intelligence, often outside of of
Corvid's birds of a higher intelligence, will often choose one
(02:19):
pet giant, one person that is their person. I've had
experiences with highly intelligent birds outside of the Corvid world,
both positive and negative, to be sure. And this is
something that's really close to myself to you for some
(02:40):
negative reasons. And of course to our research associate, doctor Zach.
One night over seep Top, a doctor appeared. But this
is no normal doctor. Who's there. It's Zack Zach who
the doctor named Zach And he's here to Billiard stress,
(03:03):
Jessica College pett Is cat teacher, history books at this stuff.
Let's go with other things. Yeah, how'll work Zack who
earned that nickname, by the way, folks, And uh, And
(03:26):
today we're gonna talk about a creature, a bird, a
gray parrot named Alex, who is often called the most
intelligent avian on record. The story starts in there's this
person named Irene Pepperberg. Awesome name, uh. Irene Pepperberg is
(03:49):
an animal psychologist and adopts one year old African gray
parrot named Alex. No. Pepperberg was a researcher at Perdue
University at the time, and she was studying something that
you know continually fascinates me man, animal cognition. Right, the
(04:09):
definition of intelligence? Does that elephant recognize itself in the mirror?
Does the dolphin feel lost? Does the canine experience love? Joy, uh,
jealousy or envy? Technically these are questions that humans have
grappled with forever and ever, by which I mean just that,
(04:32):
you know, the dawn of human history and all at
the very least sense, like you know, the first Disney
movie with anthromy morphizes talking celebrity voiced animals. You know,
it's certainly an easy thing for the mind to do.
As we as humans tend to be a little bit
self centered, we I think, assume that all other living
creatures see and experience the world in the same way
(04:53):
that we do. Yeah, and this is something we're talking
about off air. This is one of the things that
fascinates me. First off, the h and the human uh
fad on Earth still doesn't have a workable definition of
what intelligence is, what it means. And there are a
lot of assumptions throughout, you know, the majority of human
(05:15):
history that non human animals are less intelligent. Right, And
then the pendulum swung to the point where uh, scientists
were saying, hey, animals, certain animals do seem to be
quite intelligent by these various metrics we can produce. But
(05:38):
are they is it the same sort of intelligence? Right?
What is the difference between sentience and sapiens? These are
the questions Pepperberg is tackling in this amazing story. Up
until she partnered up with Alex the parrot, most people
believe that birds were kind of ummies, you know, that
(06:01):
they had evolutionarily sacrificed a lot of stuff for the
ability to fly, and that they you know, the the
idea was that, Okay, look a parent, a mina bird,
maybe a corvidd They can make noises, a starling even
can make noises that sound like uh. They are responsive
(06:23):
and cognizant of a conversation. But they're really just mimicking you.
And that's that's one of the big questions about the
story of Alex, the so called most intelligent Avian. M hmm, yeah,
I mean we'll get into this to what it also
does bring into question the whole idea of even our
(06:43):
intelligence and like does intelligence Do intelligence and language necessarily
mean the same thing? Like, um, we can we we
learn language through mimicry as well, you know, when we're
when we're babies, and we get gradually more and more
adept at it as we keep being surrounded by the
those sources that we then kind of internalize, and then
you know, language sort of takes on a life of
(07:04):
its own based on sort of set rules. I would argue,
I've never really seen a parrot go from being able to,
you know, recite back some sort of catchphrase to just
all of a sudden speaking in complete thoughts and sentences. Um,
but I don't know, Maybe Pepperberg will will prove me
wrong there. But let's do start with Alex stands for
a thing. It's an acronym which we love. Here a
(07:25):
ridiculous history Avian language experiment or Avian learning experiment. Pepperberg
decided to work with the gray, the African gray, not
the Norwegian blue, which is dead already. And because the
monty pythons, uh, African gray partly because um, they have
clear uh the avin ability to kind of vocalize um,
(07:48):
with a certain amount of clarity um quote unquote again
uh and they are known for their abilities to quote
unquote talk. So currently these are actually also endangered for
it's by the way, at the time, um So at
this point she had three of the endangered birds as subjects,
one of which was Alex the star of our show.
(08:09):
Here and this lovely Wired article from two thousand five
pulls a quote from Pepperberg saying, um, they don't have
the same rock Polly Wanna cracker type of vocalizations that
some other parents do. So they're a little bit more
smooth operators, you know, a little bit more of like
that radio voice comes to parents. Well, I wouldn't quite
(08:33):
call them quiet storm. But let's let's let's play a
clip so everybody can get a sense of this. We're
just gonna give you a little taste of Alex the parrot,
not Alex Williams, who can post our track and Noel
next maybe we can react to this. Uh. First test
(08:54):
would be can you tell which voice is the human
which voices the bird? That's an easy one. Second, would love,
would love to hear reactions? All right, here we go.
This is from an experiment where it Alex is commenting
on objects that he is shown by his human friend.
(09:17):
WHOA that's right? How many? Child? That's right? You're a good? No, No,
you can't go back yet, nightmarish mark. It's like a demon.
(09:38):
So we will Uh, well it did there? Thank you.
So we hear Alex indicating a number of objects, right,
how many responds to uh? And he keeps asking or
(09:58):
he keeps saying I want to go back like he
he wants to Uh, he's kind of bored, right, one
could say if we're anthropomorphizing, and then what else does
he do? He asked for water, which might just be
him stalling. What what are your what are your thoughts?
You know, like to tell you're a little creeped out.
I want to go back to hell. Send me back
(10:20):
to Hell. I mean, it's just it's like backwards talk.
It's the kind of thing you hear you play exactly.
It's like yes, Black Lodge led Zeppelin demonic masking kind of.
I'm sorry, I'm really not joking here. That triggers me.
That voice is terrifying. It's not cute, it's not unnatural.
(10:42):
And I know why it makes sense that it's unnatural,
because it's not meant to form those types of of
of of syllables, those types of sounds. It feels unnatural,
feels it does to me. Yes, it does. Um, it's
like auto tune, but not as sexy. And uh, we're
gonna pull some statements from a June fifto article that
(11:08):
Dr Pepperberg herself wrote, where she says she recalls how
she how she starts hanging out with Alex. She says
that she was sitting across from Alex gray parent and uh,
it's year old, and he seems kind of nervous. And
(11:28):
she says, we're in a really small room in this
basement at the Department of Biological Sciences. They're at Purdue.
And she said, I thought, and I believe that parents
were smart and I could use a training technique, which
was revolutionary at the time, to change the way the
world thought about a bird brain. And as Pepperberg recalls,
(11:49):
a lot of people didn't take her seriously at this time.
She even says a friend once jokingly said her path
was littered with the remains of those who said it
couldn't be done. Well, I've never thought that birds were stupid. Okay,
they freaked me out, um, but I think that's actually
(12:12):
because they're quite attuned to their surroundings and their movements
are very quick in their their response times are incredibly fast.
I think that's partly what's always freaked me out about them.
But if you look at the way birds like Migraine,
they almost have like this esp thing going on the
way they that with the murmurings and all of that,
like where they you know, move in these crazy arrays.
(12:34):
I've never thought birds were stupid. And you know, like Ben,
your fascination with corvids and their ability to kind of
remember faces and you know, seek out objects and give
gifts and all that stuff. So I mean, I'm leaning
in a little bit to my my terror surrounding this topic,
but I really do truly think the birds. Possibly one
of the reasons I'm freaked out by them is they
possess some kind of otherworldly intelligence quote unquote, or just
(12:57):
a sensory perception. You know, I'll be honest, with you. Uh,
you're not alone. There A lot of people in fact
feel that way about children who also seem to have
uncanny powers. Max is raising his hand, you know, not
for nothing, are creepy kids a mainstay of horror fiction.
(13:19):
So this is weird because history hinges on such small things.
Alex was picked out of random from a group of
ten gray parents in a regular garden variety pet store,
so it's quite possible that a civilian could have picked
up Alex, and this entire experiment may have gone a
(13:41):
different direction. Pepperberg starts out with volunteers, some undergraduates, et Perdue,
some high school volunteers, and what she calls some other
faculty wives who were determined to help me make more
of a place for myself at the university than they
had managed. So this was crowdsourced. Everybody was interested, even
(14:06):
if they didn't necessarily think there would be substantive science here.
They thought, let's give it a go, and this went
against a lot of established protocol. Pepperberg had to get
the dean to agree to let her get a federal
grant or submit one, despite the fact that she was
(14:28):
not a appointed to the faculty, and then she talks
a little bit about her her predecessors. The folks were
informed this work, folks like Deepmer told that's Deepmer told
t o DT, who published an article about how he
(14:52):
had once trained a gray parent to do a duet
with him. And this was considered, in Pepperberg's mind, the
first state in two way communication, which introduces the model
slash rival observational learning technique that she used with Alex
the parrot. You know what toad means in German? What
(15:13):
does total mean in German? Well, the tea is a
little bit of an anachronistic spelling. And then I may
be overthinking this, but it means dead like to to
if someone is told them they are, they have they
have died, they've expired, doctor dead, dr died like kind
of kind of interesting. So Pepperberg essentially began to train
(15:35):
Alex along with an assistance um. They took on the
roles of kind of you know, presenting behavior for Alex
to model. They would experiment with different numbers of objects
and and colors and and things like that, and of
course it was you know, at this point, kind of
a conditioning or you know, kind of situation where they
(15:57):
would reward the bird with with praise or treats or whatever.
If the the desired behavior was was modeled correctly well,
which again like this is the earliest stages, right of
the training so or of the experiment. So whether it
continues to be just wrote memorization or training is kind
(16:18):
of tb D at this point. But at this at
this point they really just kind of starting to get
their heads around how do we train a parent to
like do human like tasks? Yeah, exactly. And this this
goes to the root of some of the criticism, as
we'll see. So if Alex answers correctly and identifies this
(16:40):
object or some aspect of it in a way the
uh the experimenters are hoping, then he gets praised. But
here's the tricky thing. If he answers incorrectly, he gets scolded.
That makes me wonder about you know, doctor did teaching
his teaching his parrot the duet? Is he is he
(17:02):
going guitar you? That is an e flat m uh? Also,
how does one scold a parrot? You know, you know
your body shamed, the wave a naughty finger at it.
It's kind of like, mmmm, that's a bad parrot. What
I like to do with my cats, is I I
(17:23):
just hold up my thumbs and I'm like, this is
why I'm in charge. I never forget. I am the
door knob, I run the But like you know, I'm
surprised that it was that they're talking about. It was
scolding instead of withholding, you know, a trink or something.
So I'm wondering, like, is it I mean for it
(17:45):
to even register to me with it, with it, with
a creature like this, it would have to inflict some
amount of pain or unpleasantness, you know, I just don't know.
I want to know more about the scolding behavior right
right net to v positive reinforcement. So this is part
of some of the criticism you'll see. But just as
(18:07):
we outline the process here model rival aspects, then after
he answers correctly or incorrectly, the assistant and the trainer
reverse their roles. This teaches, hopefully that language is a
two way street, so that Alex should understand he can
(18:29):
respond to questions when posed by any human, not just
the trainer. They're hoping to break through the idea of
a bird bonding with just one person, right, and it
seems that this met with success. Alex began to understand
the concept of two way communication. And this is a
(18:52):
this is a funny part. You gotta love this, even
if you don't love birds. Alex gets such a grasp
on this that he's starts interjecting. And if Pepperberg and
her assistants make mistakes, he's the one who's like orange
or whatever. And I think that's that's really cool. But Pepperberg,
(19:15):
being a scientist, also takes pains to note that, yes,
Alex seemed to be extraordinarily intelligent in the worlds of parrots,
but was not speaking language in the same way that
humans do. Not to mention, uh fabulous. All that is
(19:35):
interesting article by Amy lamrow Um that points out actually
has some really good video on it as well, if
you want to check that one out. All That is
Interesting Um points out that Pepperberg believed or concluded that
Alex was actually able to comprehend some pretty abstract concepts.
(19:57):
Also recognize the specificity of questions, um not just you
know that classical conditioning kind of Pavlovian response kind of
situation where you're essentially just training a creature to do
a thing based on a stimulus. A stimuli rather which
is involuntary you know at that point, like the salivating
(20:17):
you know, um for the ringing bell or whatever. This
would be more like what they would have done with
the skinner box. And like training what is it pigeons
and such spen or chickens to like pack a certain
number to solve a math problem. A lot of those things,
we know, we're used as part of kind of Huxbury
sort of circus tricks, you know, to to convince people
(20:40):
if this was an intelligent chicken by literally training it
to do a thing. Yeah, behaviorism, behavioralism. But this parrot, Alex,
seems to be a bit of cut above, uh, those examples.
At least according to Pepperburg, there were some you know,
ability to comprehend some of these more abstract kind of
(21:02):
niche subjects, to the point where I believe she ascribed
kind of a mental intelligence to the creature that would
be somewhere in line with like a small child, Yeah,
like a two year old human, a dolphin, a chimpanzee,
or uh the leafblower guy who must get an alert
(21:22):
on his phone whenever we're recording. So Alex does things
that seem emotional, right, that seems as though he is
frustrated I want to point to a great article by
Denizia Smith in the New York Times, I Thinking Bird
or just Another Bird Brain. It outlines some of the
(21:42):
difficulties of objectively measuring the intelligence of something that you
come to think of as an intelligent human child that
happens to have wings or it's on that level. So
one of the telling things that is in that all
That's interesting article as well as the New York Times article,
(22:04):
when they're telling things that he would do that it
seems to exhibit emotional intelligence, is he would play sometimes
just for fun, the way that Corvid's chimpanzees and even
elephants do in the wild, an octopus under the sea
as well. He would also get frustrated, or appear to
get frustrated if he was done with a test or
(22:25):
if he was bored, he would say I'm sorry, or
he would slam his cage door. He would throw stuff
in frustration. He was a bit of a diva at times.
And yeah, we heard on that clip that you played
too band, I want to go back, drag me back
to hell. You know, when I was I was joking
(22:46):
about you know, it is a moment where several times
it's like I want to go back, and then the
researcher said, no, you can't go back. We've got to
do more stuff. But I think the implication there is
like I'm I'm I'm bored at this, this this shenanig,
shenanig me, you know, put me back in my house.
I want to I want to lap up water with
my weird black tongue. Hell for a bird, if it
(23:10):
has a concept of health, is probably being in a
basement and being experimented on and not being able to
fly free. And Pepperberg wanted to fly free with her
research segue Uh. She talks about how her first grant
did get a response. The response was what are you smoking?
(23:34):
She did not get any money, and that that is
kind of a quote that's from her her earlier statement
that we quoted. But she didn't give up. She sent
a second grant in and she got what she said
was a tiny bit of money for a year just
to see what she could accomplish, and she accomplished a lot.
Let's go to Diana Rice, psychologist at Hunter College, also
(23:58):
works in animal cognition with dolphins and elephants in particular,
and she calls this work revolutionary. But just like Pepperberg herself,
other scientists in the field are cautioning against saying Alex's
abilities are human. They say, look, the guy learned to
(24:21):
communicate and basic expressions, but he didn't show logic and
the ability to generalize that a two year old human
child wood. That's David Primac, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at
the University of Pennsylvania. He says, there's no evidence of
her cursive logic. Without that, you can't work with digital
(24:42):
numbers or more complex human grammar. And to be clear,
Alex never did a ted talk, you know what I mean.
He wasn't ever out there like lecturing people or prosecuting
a case in court. But to your point earlier, ban,
I mean, this wasn't exactly uh, the research gods were
(25:03):
not exactly smiling upon this union. Let us say, right,
it was a very scrappy existence. In order to keep
funding required moving around, you know, to various you know,
temp kind of positions and and and professor ships or
adjunct kind of things. You know. So this really was
a a labor of love and something that that Pepperberg
(25:25):
was very passionate about. And it wasn't necessarily like I mean,
maybe the big picture, maybe there's someone that had vision
and was like, Okay, this is gonna be worth it
in thirty years, but for now, it's a very scrappy existence,
like kept losing grant money and then you know, to
your point Ben about what what is she smoking? Often
just treated with scorn and bullied in certain ways by
(25:46):
colleagues and in contemporaries. Yeah, but Alex was good at
identifying stuff. His vocabulary was pretty creme de la creme
as parrot speech goes. But he was even better at
identifying colors and objects and doing a little bit of math,
(26:14):
as we see in the Vintage News and also from
Dr Pepperberg herself. He could give a precise description whim
prompted about the shape, color, or material of a certain object.
And he had an active memory. So after he learned
the name of a certain object, key, coin, caesadilla, whatever,
(26:38):
he would, he would be able to identify that object,
even if it were in different shapes or colors. So
one example, like going back to keys, he would see
different types of keys, you know what I mean, Like
think of the old idea to kind of like little
little little plastic e oversized colored keys he might give
(27:00):
to a toddler on a ring to practice fine motor
skills or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, think of platonic ideals, right,
Like when you hear the word chair, you think of
many different versions of a chair, but you could always
identify it as a chair. That's a human thing. And
people thought, and Alex appears to have that ability himself,
(27:26):
and he did. He did something massive. He was in
front of a mirror and he recognized himself and he
learned what color his plumage was. He learned he was gray.
They told him, you know, that's you, buddy, that's you.
(27:47):
That's what you look like. He is one of the
very very few animals that has posed a question about itself,
its appearance, its existence, you know, in this sort of manner.
This is monumental. You know. Self awareness is a huge thing,
and honestly a lot of humans haven't cracked it, you
(28:08):
know what I mean. It's a glasshouse situation, that's right.
And even like a concept like um infinity, you know,
or zero for example, those are kind of abstract concepts
like you know, we can we can look at things
that are there and say there are like five things
there or whatever. But but to to be presented with
nothing and and and quantify it as something that that
(28:32):
that requires some some meta cognition, like we like to
talk about, you know, thinking about thinking, because what do
you mean there's nothing there? What do you call that? Well,
it's it's zero. But also the difference between zero and
infinity are more related than one, my thing. So at
this point Alex can identify fifty different objects. He knows colors,
he knows shapes, um, he understands some of those higher
(28:54):
level meta cognitive concepts. Uh Pepperberg calls a zero concept. Right.
Pepperberg has never in her career heard of a bird
being able to wrap their you know, bird brains around them.
I'm not saying brains is a pejoraty of here. I'm
just saying it is the brain of a bird. Back
in two thousand four, she was working on a number
(29:17):
comprehension study. Alex could look at a tray of green
and blue balls and blocks and then tell Pepperberg how
many of the objects were not only blue, but we're
blue blocks. This is combining you know, shape and color
in a in a way that's seemingly not just that
(29:38):
rope memorization. Yeah, yeah, And then she did something pretty impressive.
After they went back and forth on this trial of
counting and then also categorizing by color, she said he
might be giving some wrong answers because he keeps interrupting
(29:59):
gas for grapes, bananas, their toys. He might just be bored.
So she did this. She flipped the script a little
bit and she said, okay, Smarty, what color five? And
when she asked this, it was a trick question. She
knew there were not five objects of the same color
on the tray, and he said none. He didn't come
(30:20):
up with this word on his own. Pepperberg says he
knew it in that sense of absence we discussed earlier,
because he's been involved in studies on determining differences and
similarities between objects. But the use of none in this
case is novel and unique. And this speaks directly to
criticisms people have where they say, look, did the did
(30:43):
the bird really recognize himself in the mirror or did
he just happen to coincidentally just squawk some stuff that
seemed relevant impertinent at the time. So Pepperberg, no, she's
onto something. She starts mixing in this is going back
to the Wired article. She starts mixing in questions where
(31:07):
the answer would have to be none, and she gets
similar results. This gets published in the Journal of Comparative
Psychology in May two thousand five. And this is not
even getting to the super fascinating part yet. So we said,
Alex is illuminary. You know, he is a Nicola tesla
(31:28):
amongst the world of parrots. So you gotta get another parrot,
right if you want to do some real science. Yeah,
there we go. So she gets this other great parrot.
This parrot's name is Griffin, and she wants to see
if Griffin can associate sound sequences with quantities. So, as
every human listener knows, I just clicked my fingers three
(31:51):
times right click, click, click, so Pepperbird does something similar.
She plays two clicks, and she's hoping Griffin will come
in and say like true, But he doesn't say a thing.
The guys stone faced, he's totally en her. And uh.
Then she does two war clicks and Alex, who was
(32:12):
in the same room, just pops off and he's like four.
And then she has two more clicks. He goes six.
She says she looked at him and said, you want
to do an addition, you know, you want to do
some math. Fine, now, isn't this kind of what was
happening with that horse situation with clever Hans the horse,
they were like clippity clops, He would answer, I mean,
(32:34):
obviously horses can't talk, so the only way Hans could
respond to these math problems to clop his little horse hoof.
But a big part of the demonstration of that horse
was simple mathematics. Yeah. Yeah, And in that case, uh, Hans,
God love him is responding to most likely unconscious cues
(32:58):
from his human But right, and that's a big question here,
knowing that parents do have a range of cognitive skills.
Is Alex simply watching, listening for cues, and slotting in
what feels like a correct response without really understanding that
(33:19):
four plus two equals six. These are good questions, um
Alex learned for pepper Burke too correctly put the numbers
one through eight in order using multicolored refrigerator magnets. And
then she says he on his own learned to equate
(33:41):
those symbols with the appropriate number of objects. So think
of three things, right, and then think of the number
three and everybody using non Roman numerals is probably using Arabic,
right those that's where modern number symbols come from. Numerical symbols.
(34:01):
So Alex was able to look at just three regular things,
whether their keys, coins, slices of casey da, sorry, last time, promise,
and then immediately if you that can immediately equate that
with the written symbol three, that's pretty impressive. Uh. You know,
(34:21):
if we put the critics to one side, and you know,
this is obviously a very ambitious long term study. September six,
two thousand seven, Alex Uh and Pepperberg look their last
looks and squawk their last squawks at each other. She
(34:42):
says that they went through their good night ritual. Try
to assume involved a kiss on the cheek, a little
tuck in perhaps, Um, you're thinking of the dolphin LSD experiment.
This is a family show. That's right, as a family show.
I looked that one up. If you want, you want
to get on a list of some kind um, it's
(35:04):
the thing. Um. But yeah, she said that these these
rituals would vary slightly. Uh. And this time she told
him it was time to go to the cage, and
the birds said you'd be good. Oh, we're good. I
love you. It actually sounded less creepy your impression. But
(35:26):
do we do we have a clip of this, Let's know,
not the final the final squawk. Surely this is a
tender moment between friends. Yep, we have it. Oh my gosh.
Well let's hear it. I'll try. I'll try my impression again, cook,
and we'll see what it actually sounds like. You be good,
(35:48):
I love you. All right, So we're gonna play a
clip here of one of their nightly routines, and he
and Ireen continued the night. He teen, I love you,
I love you. I'm trying. So that's an example of
(36:13):
of their good night routine, which seems oddly wholesome. You
know what's kind of pis are it is? And honestly,
at this point too, I feel like the bird's voice
is a little less shaky and creepy sounding than it
was when it started, you know, I think it's gotten
better and intoning and the kind of mimicking a little
bit more of an I'm sorry. Look all you bird
lovers out there who are cursing my name, I get it.
(36:36):
It's just it's I hope, but I didn't mean to
make it sound like the Exorcist voice or anything, you know,
that was very wholesome. Man and Picks are like, you're right.
So a year after the the the thirty years in
question that was supposed to be the tenure of this study,
Alex was gone. Mm hmm yeah. Why why wasn't that
(37:01):
enough time to fully understand, you know, whether this stuff
is real or not? Because it still seems like the
jury is kind of outben Well, it's partially due to um,
it's partially due to competing opinions about animal cognition, and
also also one criticism people will levy this not us.
(37:23):
This is criticism that gets brought up in the scientific community.
They'll say, hey, this one person and their team spent
three decades with this one instance of the gray parrot, right,
and so maybe they started putting out signals that they
were not aware of. Maybe they I mean, they certainly
(37:46):
emotionally bonded. Pepperberg says that she was devastated when Alex
passed away, unfortunately about fifteen years younger than most parts
and captivity. But what this teaches us, this amazing story,
whether you hate birds or you love them and wish
you could turn into a bird wherever you are in
(38:07):
the spectrum. What this shows us is that there is
still a lot to be learned about the living world
and about the other animals that we are so fortunate
to spend time with today. I would say personally, I
don't have them. I don't have the emotional space to
(38:30):
have a parrot roommate, you know what I mean. I
would like it to be more of an indoor outdoor cat.
But we also know that in in ancient native communities,
people were well aware of the tendencies. They also befriended
uh these animals and respected their intelligence. And there's still
(38:50):
so much to learn. The more we learn about the
intelligence of other non human animals, the more humans learn
about themselves, which is quite a beautiful thing. Agreed um
so hughes thanks to research Associate Zachary Dr zach Williams
(39:10):
Um for finding this topic and giving us something to
chew on. Um like a like a weird hooked, beaked,
winged creature might chew on a stick of seeds. You know,
it's the thing they like, they seem to like and
huge preemptive, proactive thanks to all our fellow ridiculous Historians
(39:33):
who will be visiting the Ridiculous Historians Facebook page. Post
your favorite funny, wholesome or creepy examples of Avian intelligence.
We love to see them. Big thanks to Mr Max Williams,
first of his name, uh big, Thanks of course, as
always to our favorite part Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister,
(39:57):
who else who else? Big? Thanks Deves, Jeff Go, Chris
rossi Otis uh big. Thanks to you Know no man
right back at you, and Max. Thanks to you for
for all your gentle and approving faces you've been making.
I've really felt seen on this one. Be good. We'll
see you tomorrow. Until next time. For more podcasts for
(40:26):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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