(couldnt pass this up) a really smart parrot

[antstastegood]

I sincerely apologize for yet another OT thread, but this was just too much.

It's a parrot that talks, really really well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3430481.stm

[Jack]

Reminds me of Dr. Pepperberg's bird, Alex.

Animals, especially birds, are very intelligent and sentient beings, which is why we should not eat them.

[mamakash]

This report is both accurate and true . . . african greys are noted for not only the ability to mimic and produce speech, but to have an understanding of language. Amazing birds they are.
Cool story! Thanks!

[cowtime]

African Greys are soooo amazing.

A vet I knew had one that would, among other things, make the sound of the phone ringing, answer the phone in his voice, diagnose the problem being called about. She would also play jokes on one of his dogs. Such as calling the dog (in his voice), when the dog would come into the room as commanded, she would say "stupid dog" or "bad dog", then laugh. These things were done sheerly for her own amusment, not commanded or taught by a human.

The thing that bothers me is that they are so intelligent that they are often very unhappy in captivity. The feather plucking evident on the bird that is the subject of the article is a common sight in highly intelligent birds. Not nearly as usual in birds of lesser brain-power.(which is why I opted for cockatiels).

[gonzo914]

Parrot make good gumbo, too. Much better'n hawk, although not so good as owl.

[Jerry Freeman]

Parrot make good gumbo, too. Much better'n hawk, although not so good as owl.

That reminds me of a joke.

I'll just give the last two lines ...

"Mama, that was a very expensive bird. That bird could talk!"

"Then he should have said something."

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Tyghress]

I've threatened mine with becoming macaw fricasee, caique casserole and parrotlet kebab.

They don't seem to care.

[TonyHiggins]

A woman bought a talking parrot from a pet shop. She found, when she brought him home, that he cussed like a sailor. She was dismayed and complained to the shop owner. He said he would take the parrot back, but she could probably cure the bird's bad language by some discipline. "The next time he uses foul (fowl) language, stick him in the freezer for 5 minutes. Parrots hate the cold and he'll learn his lesson." The woman decided to give this a try. The next time the parrot cussed, she promptly stuck him in her freezer and opened the door after 5 minutes. There was the bird shivering like crazy. The woman said, "Have you learned your lesson about the bad language?" The bird replied, "Yeah, I'll never cuss again." As he stepped out of the freezer, he added, looking over his shoulder, "What did the chicken do?"

[jim stone]

Might be prudent to be careful about such enthusiastic
reports. Koko the Gorilla was denounced as
a non-language user by Noam Chomsky,
when he finally met her. FWIW.

[herbivore12]

Might be prudent to be careful about such enthusiastic
reports. Koko the Gorilla was denounced as
a non-language user by Noam Chomsky,
when he finally met her. FWIW.

Re: African greys (and a number of other birds): the evidence for very high intelligence is well established, and for language the evidence is quite strong, too. Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising, in an animal in which vocal communication and mimicry is important and superb even when they're not in a clinical environment. That said, I have real misgivings about the parrot reported on here (telepathy?! c'mon...), but Irene Pepperberg, now of the MIT cognitive studies department, has done some very interesting, very well-controlled work with parrots, and much of it's now collected in the book "The Alex Papers". Fascinating, eye-opening stuff. None of it is suggestive of telepathy though; I fear our friends at the BBC are become just a bit too . . . well, something or other.

As a bird owner ( or rather, as one who is owned by birds) I have plenty of anecdotal and personal experience of their brightness and empathic powers. If you think your dog or cat is good at reading you, wait until you've been around a bird a while; almost creepy, their behavior. Telepathy it ain't, but they display an amazing, almost discomforting facility with interpreting body language, emotional cues, and verbal language.

Koko, though . . . My wife's best friend worked with Koko for a couple years, and came away unconvinced. The research I've seen is pretty unconvincing to me, too. That is, Koko and other apes may be capable of learning language, and are certainly very bright and wonderful creatures as individuals, but it's not clear to me or my wife's friend -- among others! -- that the weird semi-private communication system Koko uses is indicative of real language use. Hard to say, with how protective and cryptic her researchers have been.

On the other hand, I live with two birds (one is a caique, as one of Tyghress' birds is) who clearly understand what I say to them, yet I can't understand their own (non-human) utterances; so what does that say about me? They must think I'm mentally deficient. . .

They wouldn't be the first.

[jim stone]

Right. I'm aware of the research too; don't think
African greys are dimwits, etc.
Still, a healthy skepticism is in order
upon reading such reports, I think you agree.

It was interesting about Koko and Michael.
Stanford moved them off campus on the ground
that it was against University regulations to
keep large animals. It's unlikely that they
would have moved out a gorilla with a large
vocabulary in sign language and an 80 IQ
on a Stanford Binet for a five year old child,
a development of awesome implications
in several fields. So, reading between the lines,
they thought it was bogus but didn't
want to say so.

I note this often happens with discredited
scientific theories--they just dissapear.
About fifteen years ago an anthropolgist
at Princeton was widely covered as having shown
that Iroquois contained a good deal of
Phoenician, and that various inscriptions
on artifiacts were, in fact, Phonecian.
There was a Phoneician trade route to
North America, it turned out, trading with
Indians in the northeast. Then...everything
went silent. Language is highly interpretable,
parrots say. Of course I hope it's true
about birds.

I felt badly about Penny Patterson, who hitched
her wagon to a primate, a long-lived one,
and now is wed for life to her theory.

Once in India I met a Western couple on the
beach in Goa who had managed to acquire
a baby orangutang. They were taking him home,
they were going to build a tree house for him
in the backyard. At one point they walked off
and the orangutang got up on his hind legs
and followed after them, his arms raised in
the air, crying out. I thought: 'You fools, he
will live for thirty years, you are going to
have to deal with him till you're 60, and he will
never be human!' Best

[Jerry Freeman]

OK, fair enough. Maybe Koko's bogus, but who can doubt Lulu the dog's language prowess? O ye of little faith! Prepare to be convinced.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1485255
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1475302

Best wishes,
Jerry

[GaryKelly]

OK, fair enough. Maybe Koko's bogus, but who can doubt Lulu the dog's language prowess? O ye of little faith! Prepare to be convinced.

Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique....

[jim stone]

From Irene Pepperberg.


RESULTS OF TRAINING

Using these techniques, my students and I have, over the course of several years, taught Alex tasks that were once thought beyond the capability of all but humans or, possibly, certain nonhuman primates.30 Alex has learned labels for more than 35 different objects: paper, key, wood, hide (rawhide chips), grain, peg wood (clothes pins), cork, corn, nut, walnut, showah (shower), wheat, pasta, box, banana, gym, cracker, scraper (a nail file), chain, shoulder, block, rock (lava stone beak conditioner), carrot, gravel, back, chair, chalk, water, nail, grape, cup, grate, treat, cherry, wool, popcorn, citrus, green bean, and banerry (apple). We have tentative evidence for labels such as bread and jacks. He has functional use of "no", phrases such as "come here", "I want X" and "Wanna go Y" where X and Y are appropriate labels for objects or locations. Incorrect responses to his requests by a trainer (e.g., substitution of something other than what he requested) generally results (~75% of the time) in his saying "No" and repeating the initial request.12,17 He has acquired labels for 7 colors: rose (red), blue, green, yellow, orange, grey, and purple. He identifies five different shapes by labeling them as 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, or 6-cornered objects. He uses the labels "two", "three", "four", "five", and "sih" (six) to distinguish quantities of objects up to 6, including collections made up of novel objects, heterogeneous sets of objects, and sets in which the objects are placed in random arrays.26,27 He combines all the vocal labels to identify proficiently, request, refuse, categorize, and quantify more than 100 different objects, including those that vary somewhat from training exemplars. His accuracy has averaged ~ 80% when tested on these abilities.1,12,24,26,27

We have also examined Alex's capabilities to comprehend the concept of "category". Not only have we taught Alex to label any one of a number of different hues or shapes, but also to understand that "green", for example, is a particular instance of the category "color", and that, for any object that is both colored and shaped, the specific instances of these attributes (e.g., "green" and "three-corner") represent different categories. Thus he has learned to categorize objects having both color and shape with respect to either category based on a vocal query of "What color?" or "What shape?" (85.5%, all trials).28 Because the protocol often requires Alex to categorize the same exemplar with respect to shape at one time and color at another, the task involves flexibility in changing the basis for classification. Such flexibility, or capacity for reclassification, is thought to indicate the presence of "abstract aptitude".31

Alex has also learned abstract concepts of "same", "different", and to respond to the absence of information about these concepts if nothing is same or different. Such faculties were once thought beyond the capacity of an avian subject (note Premack30,32; but see Zentall, Hogan, & Edwards33). Thus, when presented with two objects that are identical or that vary with respect to some or all of the attributes of color, shape, and material, Alex can respond with the appropriate category label as to which attribute is "same" or "different" for any combination (80.8%, all trials; 76.0%, first trials; see Fig. 1).24 If, however, nothing is same or different, he has learned to reply "none" (83.9%, all trials; 80.9%, first trials).13 He can respond equally accurately to instances involving objects, colors, shapes, and materials not used in training, including those for which he has no labels. Furthermore, we have shown that Alex is indeed responding to the specific questions, and not merely responding on the basis of his training and the physical attributes of the objects: His responses were still above chance levels when, for example, the question "What's same?" was posed with respect to a green wooden triangle and a blue wooden triangle. If he were ignoring the question and responding on the basis of his prior training, he would have determined, and responded with the label for, the one anomalous attribute (in this case, "color"). Instead, he responded with one of the two appropriate answers [in this case, "shape" or "mah-mah" (matter)].13,24