September 12, 2007

• R.I.P. Alex the African Grey Parrot

  No single animal outside my own family pets has been as inspirational to my studies in cognition and consciousness as Alex, the amazing African Grey parrot of Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who learned to communicate with MIT Media Lab/Harvard/Brandeis University researchers in spoken English and opened up the doorway to true interspecies vocal communication between humans and other animals.

  
  Alex
  1976 - September 6, 2007
  You will be missed.
  

  I was watching Discovery Channel's Daily Planet today over dinner and was saddened to hear of Alex's passing.

  I remember first seeing Alex and psychologist Dr. Pepperberg many years ago on a number of specials on the PBS, Discovery Channel, Nova, and TLC.  Alex and Pepperberg were being profiled for their work on human-animal communication, and I remember finding myself wondrously impressed by the dexterity with which the little African Grey used the English language.  Pepperberg would show Alex a platter of differently coloured and shaped objects, asking Alex questions like "How many?", or "What matter?", or "What colour?", and Alex would respond correctly with the number of objects, or the type of material ("wood" or "cork" for example), or colour of the objects before him.  Now, I knew that among all parrots, African Greys are recognised to be the elite of talkers, but research prior to Alex had always failed to impress the majority of researchers as to the distinction between mimicry and genuine comprehension.  Over the years since, I eagerly kept up with the continuing news of the amazing Alex and his growing repertoire of abilities.

  When Pepperberg first began her research into parrot cognition, she had purchased the then-one-year-old Alex at a pet store and named him as an acronym for the Animal Learning EXperiment.  Over the years, she had taught him concepts, words, questions, and even how to use a specially designed internet-enabled computer using a "rival-model" technique, in which two humans act as examples from which Alex would learn.  As his communicative and intellectual skill grew, he and Pepperberg's team helped change scientific views about animal cognition, cognitive ethology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology.  Alex and Dr. Pepperberg's researchers demonstrated that animals could learn to use human language, express desires, and comprehend human language with the property of intentionality behind linguistic labels.   He was known for impressing researchers with novel combinations of learned words.  Beyond his ability to identify objects like keys, toys, and fruit by name and to count quantities up to 6 - recently comprehending the quantity of zero and learning to pronounce the number 7 - he had also developed a rapport with his researchers.  If he became fed up with the day's experimentation, he would simply say "I am going away" and turn around, as his researchers said when they left the room.  He had learned to request food ("want a nut"), to request to go places ("Wanna go X":  "wanna go home" for example, when he wanted to return to his cage), and for the past few years has been helping to train two protege's, Congo African Greys Griffin and Arthur by the same rival-model technique through which he was trained.  At the time of his death, he had a vast vocabulary, the ability to name and sort 100 different objects, and was said to be the intellectual equivalent of a 5-year-old human child with no limit to his development in sight.

  In his 31 years, Alex achieved celebrity status in not only the scientific community, but across the general public interested in animal consciousness.  This led to numerous television appearances for Alex and Dr. Pepperberg, including a segment with Alan Alda of M.A.S.H. fame on PBS's Scientific American Frontiers alongside chimps utilizing sign language and dolphins responding to flash cards.  Dr. Pepperberg has also published a book entitled The Alex Studies, which was released in 2002 and contains detailed descriptions of nearly three decades of research with Alex and his fellow African Greys.

  African Grey Parrots typically have a lifespan of 50-60 years, and two weeks before passing away suddenly overnight on September 6th, Alex was reported by his annual physical to be in good health.  A necropsy reported "no obvious cause of death".

  Alex will be missed by his keepers and supporters alike.  I remember eagerly ordering Dr. Pepperberg's book The Alex Studies on Amazon not long after hearing of its release, and then thumbing through it the moment it arrived.  I was even inspired by Alex to pursue my philosophical studies of consciousness, and I lent the book to my professor (now my thesis supervisor) during my directed studies course with her on the same topic.  I would have liked to have worked with Alex and Dr. Pepperberg one day if my studies allowed me the opportunity.  My initial thesis topic - that of the continuity of consciousness between humans and animals - was chosen in part due to the findings of Pepperberg with Alex, but unfortunately research in other areas of animal consciousness were insufficient for me to fully pursue that topic.  Having been a parrot owner with at least two talking parrots in my own household for almost as far as I can remember, and many very expressive cats and dogs, I found the research into Alex refreshing.  It confirmed what I and almost all other pet owners had known for centuries and that many philosophers and psychologists adamantly disavowed for just as long: animals are capable of rich cognitive lives.  The world will not be the same, knowing that Alex will not be there
  continuing to push the boundaries of our understanding of avian minds. 
  However, if Alex has changed one person's anthropocentric views about the capacities of animals, then he has achieved a task as great as any other non-human animal ever before him.

  Dr. Pepperberg once related a particularly memorable story about Alex online. 
  It goes as such:
  "Thus
  we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the
  same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing
  demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a
  very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to
  see
  Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters
  on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and
  asked, 'Alex,
  what sound is blue?' He answers, 'Ssss.' It was an 's', so we
  say 'Good birdie' and he replies, 'Want a nut.'

  Well,
  I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time
  to eat
  a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, 'What sound is green?' Alex
  answers, 'Ssshh.' He's right, it's 'sh,' and we go through the
  routine again: 'Good parrot.' 'Want a nut.' 'Alex, wait. What
  sound is orange?' 'ch.' 'Good bird!' 'Want a nut.' We're going
  on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated.
  He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, 'Want
  a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh.' "

  
  More Information on Alex can be found at the following sites:
  -The Boston Globe: "Death of gifted parrot stuns scientists" - 11 September 2007
  -NPR: "Alex the Parrot, an Apt Student, Passes Away" - 10 September 2007 - with recent interview with Dr. Pepperberg since Alex passed away (click on "Listen")
  -ABC News: Good Morning America - Video "Farewell to a Genius Bird"  (click on the video to watch).
  -The Alex Foundation - press release
  -The Alex Foundation (and Donation for Alex Foundation Memorial)
  -International Herald Tribune - "A thinking parrot's loving good-bye" - 11 September 2007
  -The Independent - article - 12 September 2007
  -The Edge article - 23 September 2003
  -Wikipedia Article on Alex
  -BirdChannel.com - "Avian Community Mourns Loss of Pioneering Parrot" & e-mail for condolence card by BirdTalk Magazine Editors to Dr. Irene Pepperberg (submissions must be received by Friday 14 September 2007)

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