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How Smart Was Alex the Grey Parrot? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio Coca,
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Speaker 1: Be good, I love you. Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks
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Speaker 1: again for tuning in. Let's give it up for our
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Speaker 1: super producer, Max Freight Train Williams Coca. Indeed, they call
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Speaker 1: me Ben Joint as always with the one and only
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Speaker 1: Mr Noel Brown. No, I gotta tell you we talked
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Speaker 1: about it off air. We talked about it off air,
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Speaker 1: my man. Thank you so much personally, personally, thank you
0:58
Speaker 1: so much for doing this episode. Well you're welcome. Hold on, sorry,
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Speaker 1: I just had to hear that real quick. It's a
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Speaker 1: fun sound um made by tiny Japanese toy you know.
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Speaker 1: Bed you might have noticed my lackluster coca. I'm not.
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Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by this topic. But I may have alluded
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Speaker 1: in the past that I have a certain phobia towards
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Speaker 1: avian creatures. Um and the big talking ones with the
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Speaker 1: big thick tree trunk claws. Those are the ones that
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Speaker 1: pure nightmare fuel for me. Don't want them, don't need them.
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Speaker 1: I'm sure they're lovely to some folks, you know, if
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Speaker 1: you know, the doctor Doolittles of the world out there
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Speaker 1: have have at um, not for me. And the idea
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Speaker 1: that these these creatures, these these parrots, you know, could
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Speaker 1: in fact be intelligent enough to like swoop down and
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Speaker 1: have a chat with me, um extra nightmare fuel or
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Speaker 1: maybe it make it better? Do you make it more? Pa?
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Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, that's a good question. We'll
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Speaker 1: discover the answer here. Yeah. They usually uh, in my experience, uh,
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Speaker 1: higher birds of a higher intelligence, often outside of of
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Speaker 1: Corvid's birds of a higher intelligence, will often choose one
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Speaker 1: pet giant, one person that is their person. I've had
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Speaker 1: experiences with highly intelligent birds outside of the Corvid world,
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Speaker 1: both positive and negative, to be sure. And this is
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Speaker 1: something that's really close to myself to you for some
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Speaker 1: negative reasons. And of course to our research associate, doctor Zach.
2:44
Speaker 1: One night over seep Top, a doctor appeared. But this
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Speaker 1: is no normal doctor. Who's there. It's Zack Zach who
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Speaker 1: the doctor named Zach And he's here to Billiard stress,
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Speaker 1: Jessica College pett Is cat teacher, history books at this stuff.
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Speaker 1: Let's go with other things. Yeah, how'll work Zack who
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Speaker 1: earned that nickname, by the way, folks, And uh, And
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Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about a creature, a bird, a
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Speaker 1: gray parrot named Alex, who is often called the most
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Speaker 1: intelligent avian on record. The story starts in there's this
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Speaker 1: person named Irene Pepperberg. Awesome name, uh. Irene Pepperberg is
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Speaker 1: an animal psychologist and adopts one year old African gray
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Speaker 1: parrot named Alex. No. Pepperberg was a researcher at Perdue
4:01
Speaker 1: University at the time, and she was studying something that
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Speaker 1: you know continually fascinates me man, animal cognition. Right, the
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Speaker 1: definition of intelligence? Does that elephant recognize itself in the mirror?
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Speaker 1: Does the dolphin feel lost? Does the canine experience love? Joy, uh,
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Speaker 1: jealousy or envy? Technically these are questions that humans have
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Speaker 1: grappled with forever and ever, by which I mean just that,
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Speaker 1: you know, the dawn of human history and all at
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Speaker 1: the very least sense, like you know, the first Disney
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Speaker 1: movie with anthromy morphizes talking celebrity voiced animals. You know,
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Speaker 1: it's certainly an easy thing for the mind to do.
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Speaker 1: As we as humans tend to be a little bit
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Speaker 1: self centered, we I think, assume that all other living
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Speaker 1: creatures see and experience the world in the same way
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Speaker 1: that we do. Yeah, and this is something we're talking
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Speaker 1: about off air. This is one of the things that
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Speaker 1: fascinates me. First off, the h and the human uh
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Speaker 1: fad on Earth still doesn't have a workable definition of
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Speaker 1: what intelligence is, what it means. And there are a
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Speaker 1: lot of assumptions throughout, you know, the majority of human
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Speaker 1: history that non human animals are less intelligent. Right, And
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Speaker 1: then the pendulum swung to the point where uh, scientists
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Speaker 1: were saying, hey, animals, certain animals do seem to be
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Speaker 1: quite intelligent by these various metrics we can produce. But
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Speaker 1: are they is it the same sort of intelligence? Right?
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Speaker 1: What is the difference between sentience and sapiens? These are
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Speaker 1: the questions Pepperberg is tackling in this amazing story. Up
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Speaker 1: until she partnered up with Alex the parrot, most people
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Speaker 1: believe that birds were kind of ummies, you know, that
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Speaker 1: they had evolutionarily sacrificed a lot of stuff for the
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Speaker 1: ability to fly, and that they you know, the the
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Speaker 1: idea was that, Okay, look a parent, a mina bird,
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Speaker 1: maybe a corvidd They can make noises, a starling even
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Speaker 1: can make noises that sound like uh. They are responsive
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Speaker 1: and cognizant of a conversation. But they're really just mimicking you.
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Speaker 1: And that's that's one of the big questions about the
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Speaker 1: story of Alex, the so called most intelligent Avian. M hmm, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I mean we'll get into this to what it also
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Speaker 1: does bring into question the whole idea of even our
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Speaker 1: intelligence and like does intelligence Do intelligence and language necessarily
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Speaker 1: mean the same thing? Like, um, we can we we
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Speaker 1: learn language through mimicry as well, you know, when we're
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Speaker 1: when we're babies, and we get gradually more and more
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Speaker 1: adept at it as we keep being surrounded by the
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Speaker 1: those sources that we then kind of internalize, and then
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Speaker 1: you know, language sort of takes on a life of
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Speaker 1: its own based on sort of set rules. I would argue,
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Speaker 1: I've never really seen a parrot go from being able to,
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Speaker 1: you know, recite back some sort of catchphrase to just
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Speaker 1: all of a sudden speaking in complete thoughts and sentences. Um,
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Speaker 1: but I don't know, Maybe Pepperberg will will prove me
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Speaker 1: wrong there. But let's do start with Alex stands for
7:24
Speaker 1: a thing. It's an acronym which we love. Here a
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Speaker 1: ridiculous history Avian language experiment or Avian learning experiment. Pepperberg
7:32
Speaker 1: decided to work with the gray, the African gray, not
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Speaker 1: the Norwegian blue, which is dead already. And because the
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Speaker 1: monty pythons, uh, African gray partly because um, they have
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Speaker 1: clear uh the avin ability to kind of vocalize um,
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Speaker 1: with a certain amount of clarity um quote unquote again
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Speaker 1: uh and they are known for their abilities to quote
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Speaker 1: unquote talk. So currently these are actually also endangered for
8:00
Speaker 1: it's by the way, at the time, um So at
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Speaker 1: this point she had three of the endangered birds as subjects,
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Speaker 1: one of which was Alex the star of our show.
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Speaker 1: Here and this lovely Wired article from two thousand five
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Speaker 1: pulls a quote from Pepperberg saying, um, they don't have
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Speaker 1: the same rock Polly Wanna cracker type of vocalizations that
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Speaker 1: some other parents do. So they're a little bit more
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Speaker 1: smooth operators, you know, a little bit more of like
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Speaker 1: that radio voice comes to parents. Well, I wouldn't quite
8:33
Speaker 1: call them quiet storm. But let's let's let's play a
8:38
Speaker 1: clip so everybody can get a sense of this. We're
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Speaker 1: just gonna give you a little taste of Alex the parrot,
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Speaker 1: not Alex Williams, who can post our track and Noel
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Speaker 1: next maybe we can react to this. Uh. First test
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Speaker 1: would be can you tell which voice is the human
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Speaker 1: which voices the bird? That's an easy one. Second, would love,
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Speaker 1: would love to hear reactions? All right, here we go.
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Speaker 1: This is from an experiment where it Alex is commenting
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Speaker 1: on objects that he is shown by his human friend.
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Speaker 1: WHOA that's right? How many? Child? That's right? You're a good? No, No,
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Speaker 1: you can't go back yet, nightmarish mark. It's like a demon.
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Speaker 1: So we will Uh, well it did there? Thank you.
9:49
Speaker 1: So we hear Alex indicating a number of objects, right,
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Speaker 1: how many responds to uh? And he keeps asking or
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Speaker 1: he keeps saying I want to go back like he
10:01
Speaker 1: he wants to Uh, he's kind of bored, right, one
10:05
Speaker 1: could say if we're anthropomorphizing, and then what else does
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Speaker 1: he do? He asked for water, which might just be
10:12
Speaker 1: him stalling. What what are your what are your thoughts?
10:15
Speaker 1: You know, like to tell you're a little creeped out.
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Speaker 1: I want to go back to hell. Send me back
10:20
Speaker 1: to Hell. I mean, it's just it's like backwards talk.
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Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing you hear you play exactly.
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Speaker 1: It's like yes, Black Lodge led Zeppelin demonic masking kind of.
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm really not joking here. That triggers me.
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Speaker 1: That voice is terrifying. It's not cute, it's not unnatural.
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Speaker 1: And I know why it makes sense that it's unnatural,
10:44
Speaker 1: because it's not meant to form those types of of
10:47
Speaker 1: of of syllables, those types of sounds. It feels unnatural,
10:51
Speaker 1: feels it does to me. Yes, it does. Um, it's
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Speaker 1: like auto tune, but not as sexy. And uh, we're
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Speaker 1: gonna pull some statements from a June fifto article that
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Speaker 1: Dr Pepperberg herself wrote, where she says she recalls how
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Speaker 1: she how she starts hanging out with Alex. She says
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Speaker 1: that she was sitting across from Alex gray parent and uh,
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Speaker 1: it's year old, and he seems kind of nervous. And
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Speaker 1: she says, we're in a really small room in this
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Speaker 1: basement at the Department of Biological Sciences. They're at Purdue.
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Speaker 1: And she said, I thought, and I believe that parents
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Speaker 1: were smart and I could use a training technique, which
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Speaker 1: was revolutionary at the time, to change the way the
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Speaker 1: world thought about a bird brain. And as Pepperberg recalls,
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Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't take her seriously at this time.
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Speaker 1: She even says a friend once jokingly said her path
12:00
Speaker 1: was littered with the remains of those who said it
12:03
Speaker 1: couldn't be done. Well, I've never thought that birds were stupid. Okay,
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Speaker 1: they freaked me out, um, but I think that's actually
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Speaker 1: because they're quite attuned to their surroundings and their movements
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Speaker 1: are very quick in their their response times are incredibly fast.
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Speaker 1: I think that's partly what's always freaked me out about them.
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Speaker 1: But if you look at the way birds like Migraine,
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Speaker 1: they almost have like this esp thing going on the
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Speaker 1: way they that with the murmurings and all of that,
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Speaker 1: like where they you know, move in these crazy arrays.
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Speaker 1: I've never thought birds were stupid. And you know, like Ben,
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Speaker 1: your fascination with corvids and their ability to kind of
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Speaker 1: remember faces and you know, seek out objects and give
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Speaker 1: gifts and all that stuff. So I mean, I'm leaning
12:45
Speaker 1: in a little bit to my my terror surrounding this topic,
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Speaker 1: but I really do truly think the birds. Possibly one
12:51
Speaker 1: of the reasons I'm freaked out by them is they
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Speaker 1: possess some kind of otherworldly intelligence quote unquote, or just
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Speaker 1: a sensory perception. You know, I'll be honest, with you. Uh,
13:02
Speaker 1: you're not alone. There A lot of people in fact
13:05
Speaker 1: feel that way about children who also seem to have
13:10
Speaker 1: uncanny powers. Max is raising his hand, you know, not
13:14
Speaker 1: for nothing, are creepy kids a mainstay of horror fiction.
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Speaker 1: So this is weird because history hinges on such small things.
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Speaker 1: Alex was picked out of random from a group of
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Speaker 1: ten gray parents in a regular garden variety pet store,
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Speaker 1: so it's quite possible that a civilian could have picked
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Speaker 1: up Alex, and this entire experiment may have gone a
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Speaker 1: different direction. Pepperberg starts out with volunteers, some undergraduates, et Perdue,
13:49
Speaker 1: some high school volunteers, and what she calls some other
13:54
Speaker 1: faculty wives who were determined to help me make more
13:58
Speaker 1: of a place for myself at the university than they
14:01
Speaker 1: had managed. So this was crowdsourced. Everybody was interested, even
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Speaker 1: if they didn't necessarily think there would be substantive science here.
14:11
Speaker 1: They thought, let's give it a go, and this went
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Speaker 1: against a lot of established protocol. Pepperberg had to get
14:21
Speaker 1: the dean to agree to let her get a federal
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Speaker 1: grant or submit one, despite the fact that she was
14:28
Speaker 1: not a appointed to the faculty, and then she talks
14:35
Speaker 1: a little bit about her her predecessors. The folks were
14:40
Speaker 1: informed this work, folks like Deepmer told that's Deepmer told
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Speaker 1: t o DT, who published an article about how he
14:52
Speaker 1: had once trained a gray parent to do a duet
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Speaker 1: with him. And this was considered, in Pepperberg's mind, the
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Speaker 1: first state in two way communication, which introduces the model
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Speaker 1: slash rival observational learning technique that she used with Alex
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Speaker 1: the parrot. You know what toad means in German? What
15:13
Speaker 1: does total mean in German? Well, the tea is a
15:16
Speaker 1: little bit of an anachronistic spelling. And then I may
15:18
Speaker 1: be overthinking this, but it means dead like to to
15:23
Speaker 1: if someone is told them they are, they have they
15:25
Speaker 1: have died, they've expired, doctor dead, dr died like kind
15:30
Speaker 1: of kind of interesting. So Pepperberg essentially began to train
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Speaker 1: Alex along with an assistance um. They took on the
15:39
Speaker 1: roles of kind of you know, presenting behavior for Alex
15:44
Speaker 1: to model. They would experiment with different numbers of objects
15:49
Speaker 1: and and colors and and things like that, and of
15:52
Speaker 1: course it was you know, at this point, kind of
15:55
Speaker 1: a conditioning or you know, kind of situation where they
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Speaker 1: would reward the bird with with praise or treats or whatever.
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Speaker 1: If the the desired behavior was was modeled correctly well,
16:07
Speaker 1: which again like this is the earliest stages, right of
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Speaker 1: the training so or of the experiment. So whether it
16:13
Speaker 1: continues to be just wrote memorization or training is kind
16:18
Speaker 1: of tb D at this point. But at this at
16:20
Speaker 1: this point they really just kind of starting to get
16:22
Speaker 1: their heads around how do we train a parent to
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Speaker 1: like do human like tasks? Yeah, exactly. And this this
16:31
Speaker 1: goes to the root of some of the criticism, as
16:34
Speaker 1: we'll see. So if Alex answers correctly and identifies this
16:40
Speaker 1: object or some aspect of it in a way the
16:44
Speaker 1: uh the experimenters are hoping, then he gets praised. But
16:48
Speaker 1: here's the tricky thing. If he answers incorrectly, he gets scolded.
16:54
Speaker 1: That makes me wonder about you know, doctor did teaching
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Speaker 1: his teaching his parrot the duet? Is he is he
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Speaker 1: going guitar you? That is an e flat m uh? Also,
17:10
Speaker 1: how does one scold a parrot? You know, you know
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Speaker 1: your body shamed, the wave a naughty finger at it.
17:17
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, mmmm, that's a bad parrot. What
17:21
Speaker 1: I like to do with my cats, is I I
17:23
Speaker 1: just hold up my thumbs and I'm like, this is
17:25
Speaker 1: why I'm in charge. I never forget. I am the
17:30
Speaker 1: door knob, I run the But like you know, I'm
17:35
Speaker 1: surprised that it was that they're talking about. It was
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Speaker 1: scolding instead of withholding, you know, a trink or something.
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Speaker 1: So I'm wondering, like, is it I mean for it
17:45
Speaker 1: to even register to me with it, with it, with
17:48
Speaker 1: a creature like this, it would have to inflict some
17:51
Speaker 1: amount of pain or unpleasantness, you know, I just don't know.
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Speaker 1: I want to know more about the scolding behavior right
17:59
Speaker 1: right net to v positive reinforcement. So this is part
18:04
Speaker 1: of some of the criticism you'll see. But just as
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Speaker 1: we outline the process here model rival aspects, then after
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Speaker 1: he answers correctly or incorrectly, the assistant and the trainer
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Speaker 1: reverse their roles. This teaches, hopefully that language is a
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Speaker 1: two way street, so that Alex should understand he can
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Speaker 1: respond to questions when posed by any human, not just
18:33
Speaker 1: the trainer. They're hoping to break through the idea of
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Speaker 1: a bird bonding with just one person, right, and it
18:44
Speaker 1: seems that this met with success. Alex began to understand
18:47
Speaker 1: the concept of two way communication. And this is a
18:52
Speaker 1: this is a funny part. You gotta love this, even
18:54
Speaker 1: if you don't love birds. Alex gets such a grasp
18:57
Speaker 1: on this that he's starts interjecting. And if Pepperberg and
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Speaker 1: her assistants make mistakes, he's the one who's like orange
19:08
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I think that's that's really cool. But Pepperberg,
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Speaker 1: being a scientist, also takes pains to note that, yes,
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Speaker 1: Alex seemed to be extraordinarily intelligent in the worlds of parrots,
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Speaker 1: but was not speaking language in the same way that
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Speaker 1: humans do. Not to mention, uh fabulous. All that is
19:35
Speaker 1: interesting article by Amy lamrow Um that points out actually
19:41
Speaker 1: has some really good video on it as well, if
19:43
Speaker 1: you want to check that one out. All That is
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Speaker 1: Interesting Um points out that Pepperberg believed or concluded that
19:51
Speaker 1: Alex was actually able to comprehend some pretty abstract concepts.
19:57
Speaker 1: Also recognize the specificity of questions, um not just you
20:02
Speaker 1: know that classical conditioning kind of Pavlovian response kind of
20:06
Speaker 1: situation where you're essentially just training a creature to do
20:10
Speaker 1: a thing based on a stimulus. A stimuli rather which
20:13
Speaker 1: is involuntary you know at that point, like the salivating
20:17
Speaker 1: you know, um for the ringing bell or whatever. This
20:21
Speaker 1: would be more like what they would have done with
20:24
Speaker 1: the skinner box. And like training what is it pigeons
20:28
Speaker 1: and such spen or chickens to like pack a certain
20:31
Speaker 1: number to solve a math problem. A lot of those things,
20:33
Speaker 1: we know, we're used as part of kind of Huxbury
20:37
Speaker 1: sort of circus tricks, you know, to to convince people
20:40
Speaker 1: if this was an intelligent chicken by literally training it
20:43
Speaker 1: to do a thing. Yeah, behaviorism, behavioralism. But this parrot, Alex,
20:49
Speaker 1: seems to be a bit of cut above, uh, those examples.
20:53
Speaker 1: At least according to Pepperburg, there were some you know,
20:57
Speaker 1: ability to comprehend some of these more abstract kind of
21:02
Speaker 1: niche subjects, to the point where I believe she ascribed
21:06
Speaker 1: kind of a mental intelligence to the creature that would
21:09
Speaker 1: be somewhere in line with like a small child, Yeah,
21:14
Speaker 1: like a two year old human, a dolphin, a chimpanzee,
21:18
Speaker 1: or uh the leafblower guy who must get an alert
21:22
Speaker 1: on his phone whenever we're recording. So Alex does things
21:26
Speaker 1: that seem emotional, right, that seems as though he is
21:30
Speaker 1: frustrated I want to point to a great article by
21:33
Speaker 1: Denizia Smith in the New York Times, I Thinking Bird
21:38
Speaker 1: or just Another Bird Brain. It outlines some of the
21:42
Speaker 1: difficulties of objectively measuring the intelligence of something that you
21:49
Speaker 1: come to think of as an intelligent human child that
21:54
Speaker 1: happens to have wings or it's on that level. So
21:58
Speaker 1: one of the telling things that is in that all
22:01
Speaker 1: That's interesting article as well as the New York Times article,
22:04
Speaker 1: when they're telling things that he would do that it
22:07
Speaker 1: seems to exhibit emotional intelligence, is he would play sometimes
22:12
Speaker 1: just for fun, the way that Corvid's chimpanzees and even
22:16
Speaker 1: elephants do in the wild, an octopus under the sea
22:19
Speaker 1: as well. He would also get frustrated, or appear to
22:22
Speaker 1: get frustrated if he was done with a test or
22:25
Speaker 1: if he was bored, he would say I'm sorry, or
22:30
Speaker 1: he would slam his cage door. He would throw stuff
22:34
Speaker 1: in frustration. He was a bit of a diva at times.
22:38
Speaker 1: And yeah, we heard on that clip that you played
22:42
Speaker 1: too band, I want to go back, drag me back
22:44
Speaker 1: to hell. You know, when I was I was joking
22:46
Speaker 1: about you know, it is a moment where several times
22:48
Speaker 1: it's like I want to go back, and then the
22:50
Speaker 1: researcher said, no, you can't go back. We've got to
22:52
Speaker 1: do more stuff. But I think the implication there is
22:55
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm I'm bored at this, this this shenanig,
22:59
Speaker 1: shenanig me, you know, put me back in my house.
23:03
Speaker 1: I want to I want to lap up water with
23:06
Speaker 1: my weird black tongue. Hell for a bird, if it
23:10
Speaker 1: has a concept of health, is probably being in a
23:13
Speaker 1: basement and being experimented on and not being able to
23:16
Speaker 1: fly free. And Pepperberg wanted to fly free with her
23:21
Speaker 1: research segue Uh. She talks about how her first grant
23:29
Speaker 1: did get a response. The response was what are you smoking?
23:34
Speaker 1: She did not get any money, and that that is
23:36
Speaker 1: kind of a quote that's from her her earlier statement
23:39
Speaker 1: that we quoted. But she didn't give up. She sent
23:43
Speaker 1: a second grant in and she got what she said
23:46
Speaker 1: was a tiny bit of money for a year just
23:49
Speaker 1: to see what she could accomplish, and she accomplished a lot.
23:53
Speaker 1: Let's go to Diana Rice, psychologist at Hunter College, also
23:58
Speaker 1: works in animal cognition with dolphins and elephants in particular,
24:03
Speaker 1: and she calls this work revolutionary. But just like Pepperberg herself,
24:10
Speaker 1: other scientists in the field are cautioning against saying Alex's
24:15
Speaker 1: abilities are human. They say, look, the guy learned to
24:21
Speaker 1: communicate and basic expressions, but he didn't show logic and
24:27
Speaker 1: the ability to generalize that a two year old human
24:31
Speaker 1: child wood. That's David Primac, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at
24:36
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania. He says, there's no evidence of
24:39
Speaker 1: her cursive logic. Without that, you can't work with digital
24:42
Speaker 1: numbers or more complex human grammar. And to be clear,
24:47
Speaker 1: Alex never did a ted talk, you know what I mean.
24:49
Speaker 1: He wasn't ever out there like lecturing people or prosecuting
24:55
Speaker 1: a case in court. But to your point earlier, ban,
24:58
Speaker 1: I mean, this wasn't exactly uh, the research gods were
25:03
Speaker 1: not exactly smiling upon this union. Let us say, right,
25:06
Speaker 1: it was a very scrappy existence. In order to keep
25:09
Speaker 1: funding required moving around, you know, to various you know,
25:15
Speaker 1: temp kind of positions and and and professor ships or
25:18
Speaker 1: adjunct kind of things. You know. So this really was
25:21
Speaker 1: a a labor of love and something that that Pepperberg
25:25
Speaker 1: was very passionate about. And it wasn't necessarily like I mean,
25:28
Speaker 1: maybe the big picture, maybe there's someone that had vision
25:30
Speaker 1: and was like, Okay, this is gonna be worth it
25:31
Speaker 1: in thirty years, but for now, it's a very scrappy existence,
25:36
Speaker 1: like kept losing grant money and then you know, to
25:38
Speaker 1: your point Ben about what what is she smoking? Often
25:41
Speaker 1: just treated with scorn and bullied in certain ways by
25:46
Speaker 1: colleagues and in contemporaries. Yeah, but Alex was good at
25:52
Speaker 1: identifying stuff. His vocabulary was pretty creme de la creme
25:58
Speaker 1: as parrot speech goes. But he was even better at
26:03
Speaker 1: identifying colors and objects and doing a little bit of math,
26:14
Speaker 1: as we see in the Vintage News and also from
26:18
Speaker 1: Dr Pepperberg herself. He could give a precise description whim
26:24
Speaker 1: prompted about the shape, color, or material of a certain object.
26:29
Speaker 1: And he had an active memory. So after he learned
26:32
Speaker 1: the name of a certain object, key, coin, caesadilla, whatever,
26:38
Speaker 1: he would, he would be able to identify that object,
26:42
Speaker 1: even if it were in different shapes or colors. So
26:46
Speaker 1: one example, like going back to keys, he would see
26:49
Speaker 1: different types of keys, you know what I mean, Like
26:52
Speaker 1: think of the old idea to kind of like little
26:56
Speaker 1: little little plastic e oversized colored keys he might give
27:00
Speaker 1: to a toddler on a ring to practice fine motor
27:03
Speaker 1: skills or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, think of platonic ideals, right,
27:08
Speaker 1: Like when you hear the word chair, you think of
27:13
Speaker 1: many different versions of a chair, but you could always
27:16
Speaker 1: identify it as a chair. That's a human thing. And
27:20
Speaker 1: people thought, and Alex appears to have that ability himself,
27:26
Speaker 1: and he did. He did something massive. He was in
27:32
Speaker 1: front of a mirror and he recognized himself and he
27:38
Speaker 1: learned what color his plumage was. He learned he was gray.
27:43
Speaker 1: They told him, you know, that's you, buddy, that's you.
27:47
Speaker 1: That's what you look like. He is one of the
27:51
Speaker 1: very very few animals that has posed a question about itself,
27:57
Speaker 1: its appearance, its existence, you know, in this sort of manner.
28:02
Speaker 1: This is monumental. You know. Self awareness is a huge thing,
28:06
Speaker 1: and honestly a lot of humans haven't cracked it, you
28:08
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's a glasshouse situation, that's right.
28:12
Speaker 1: And even like a concept like um infinity, you know,
28:16
Speaker 1: or zero for example, those are kind of abstract concepts
28:20
Speaker 1: like you know, we can we can look at things
28:22
Speaker 1: that are there and say there are like five things
28:24
Speaker 1: there or whatever. But but to to be presented with
28:27
Speaker 1: nothing and and and quantify it as something that that
28:32
Speaker 1: that requires some some meta cognition, like we like to
28:35
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, thinking about thinking, because what do
28:37
Speaker 1: you mean there's nothing there? What do you call that? Well,
28:39
Speaker 1: it's it's zero. But also the difference between zero and
28:42
Speaker 1: infinity are more related than one, my thing. So at
28:46
Speaker 1: this point Alex can identify fifty different objects. He knows colors,
28:50
Speaker 1: he knows shapes, um, he understands some of those higher
28:54
Speaker 1: level meta cognitive concepts. Uh Pepperberg calls a zero concept. Right.
29:02
Speaker 1: Pepperberg has never in her career heard of a bird
29:06
Speaker 1: being able to wrap their you know, bird brains around them.
29:10
Speaker 1: I'm not saying brains is a pejoraty of here. I'm
29:12
Speaker 1: just saying it is the brain of a bird. Back
29:13
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, she was working on a number
29:17
Speaker 1: comprehension study. Alex could look at a tray of green
29:21
Speaker 1: and blue balls and blocks and then tell Pepperberg how
29:26
Speaker 1: many of the objects were not only blue, but we're
29:29
Speaker 1: blue blocks. This is combining you know, shape and color
29:34
Speaker 1: in a in a way that's seemingly not just that
29:38
Speaker 1: rope memorization. Yeah, yeah, And then she did something pretty impressive.
29:46
Speaker 1: After they went back and forth on this trial of
29:48
Speaker 1: counting and then also categorizing by color, she said he
29:54
Speaker 1: might be giving some wrong answers because he keeps interrupting
29:59
Speaker 1: gas for grapes, bananas, their toys. He might just be bored.
30:03
Speaker 1: So she did this. She flipped the script a little
30:05
Speaker 1: bit and she said, okay, Smarty, what color five? And
30:10
Speaker 1: when she asked this, it was a trick question. She
30:12
Speaker 1: knew there were not five objects of the same color
30:15
Speaker 1: on the tray, and he said none. He didn't come
30:20
Speaker 1: up with this word on his own. Pepperberg says he
30:23
Speaker 1: knew it in that sense of absence we discussed earlier,
30:26
Speaker 1: because he's been involved in studies on determining differences and
30:30
Speaker 1: similarities between objects. But the use of none in this
30:35
Speaker 1: case is novel and unique. And this speaks directly to
30:39
Speaker 1: criticisms people have where they say, look, did the did
30:43
Speaker 1: the bird really recognize himself in the mirror or did
30:47
Speaker 1: he just happen to coincidentally just squawk some stuff that
30:54
Speaker 1: seemed relevant impertinent at the time. So Pepperberg, no, she's
31:00
Speaker 1: onto something. She starts mixing in this is going back
31:03
Speaker 1: to the Wired article. She starts mixing in questions where
31:07
Speaker 1: the answer would have to be none, and she gets
31:11
Speaker 1: similar results. This gets published in the Journal of Comparative
31:15
Speaker 1: Psychology in May two thousand five. And this is not
31:19
Speaker 1: even getting to the super fascinating part yet. So we said,
31:23
Speaker 1: Alex is illuminary. You know, he is a Nicola tesla
31:28
Speaker 1: amongst the world of parrots. So you gotta get another parrot,
31:32
Speaker 1: right if you want to do some real science. Yeah,
31:35
Speaker 1: there we go. So she gets this other great parrot.
31:38
Speaker 1: This parrot's name is Griffin, and she wants to see
31:41
Speaker 1: if Griffin can associate sound sequences with quantities. So, as
31:47
Speaker 1: every human listener knows, I just clicked my fingers three
31:51
Speaker 1: times right click, click, click, so Pepperbird does something similar.
31:56
Speaker 1: She plays two clicks, and she's hoping Griffin will come
32:00
Speaker 1: in and say like true, But he doesn't say a thing.
32:05
Speaker 1: The guys stone faced, he's totally en her. And uh.
32:08
Speaker 1: Then she does two war clicks and Alex, who was
32:12
Speaker 1: in the same room, just pops off and he's like four.
32:16
Speaker 1: And then she has two more clicks. He goes six.
32:20
Speaker 1: She says she looked at him and said, you want
32:23
Speaker 1: to do an addition, you know, you want to do
32:25
Speaker 1: some math. Fine, now, isn't this kind of what was
32:28
Speaker 1: happening with that horse situation with clever Hans the horse,
32:32
Speaker 1: they were like clippity clops, He would answer, I mean,
32:34
Speaker 1: obviously horses can't talk, so the only way Hans could
32:37
Speaker 1: respond to these math problems to clop his little horse hoof.
32:41
Speaker 1: But a big part of the demonstration of that horse
32:45
Speaker 1: was simple mathematics. Yeah. Yeah, And in that case, uh, Hans,
32:52
Speaker 1: God love him is responding to most likely unconscious cues
32:58
Speaker 1: from his human But right, and that's a big question here,
33:03
Speaker 1: knowing that parents do have a range of cognitive skills.
33:08
Speaker 1: Is Alex simply watching, listening for cues, and slotting in
33:14
Speaker 1: what feels like a correct response without really understanding that
33:19
Speaker 1: four plus two equals six. These are good questions, um
33:24
Speaker 1: Alex learned for pepper Burke too correctly put the numbers
33:31
Speaker 1: one through eight in order using multicolored refrigerator magnets. And
33:37
Speaker 1: then she says he on his own learned to equate
33:41
Speaker 1: those symbols with the appropriate number of objects. So think
33:46
Speaker 1: of three things, right, and then think of the number
33:50
Speaker 1: three and everybody using non Roman numerals is probably using Arabic,
33:56
Speaker 1: right those that's where modern number symbols come from. Numerical symbols.
34:01
Speaker 1: So Alex was able to look at just three regular things,
34:05
Speaker 1: whether their keys, coins, slices of casey da, sorry, last time, promise,
34:11
Speaker 1: and then immediately if you that can immediately equate that
34:16
Speaker 1: with the written symbol three, that's pretty impressive. Uh. You know,
34:21
Speaker 1: if we put the critics to one side, and you know,
34:25
Speaker 1: this is obviously a very ambitious long term study. September six,
34:31
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, Alex Uh and Pepperberg look their last
34:38
Speaker 1: looks and squawk their last squawks at each other. She
34:42
Speaker 1: says that they went through their good night ritual. Try
34:47
Speaker 1: to assume involved a kiss on the cheek, a little
34:50
Speaker 1: tuck in perhaps, Um, you're thinking of the dolphin LSD experiment.
34:56
Speaker 1: This is a family show. That's right, as a family show.
34:59
Speaker 1: I looked that one up. If you want, you want
35:01
Speaker 1: to get on a list of some kind um, it's
35:04
Speaker 1: the thing. Um. But yeah, she said that these these
35:08
Speaker 1: rituals would vary slightly. Uh. And this time she told
35:12
Speaker 1: him it was time to go to the cage, and
35:14
Speaker 1: the birds said you'd be good. Oh, we're good. I
35:20
Speaker 1: love you. It actually sounded less creepy your impression. But
35:26
Speaker 1: do we do we have a clip of this, Let's know,
35:30
Speaker 1: not the final the final squawk. Surely this is a
35:34
Speaker 1: tender moment between friends. Yep, we have it. Oh my gosh.
35:41
Speaker 1: Well let's hear it. I'll try. I'll try my impression again, cook,
35:43
Speaker 1: and we'll see what it actually sounds like. You be good,
35:48
Speaker 1: I love you. All right, So we're gonna play a
35:53
Speaker 1: clip here of one of their nightly routines, and he
35:58
Speaker 1: and Ireen continued the night. He teen, I love you,
36:03
Speaker 1: I love you. I'm trying. So that's an example of
36:13
Speaker 1: of their good night routine, which seems oddly wholesome. You
36:16
Speaker 1: know what's kind of pis are it is? And honestly,
36:19
Speaker 1: at this point too, I feel like the bird's voice
36:22
Speaker 1: is a little less shaky and creepy sounding than it
36:25
Speaker 1: was when it started, you know, I think it's gotten
36:27
Speaker 1: better and intoning and the kind of mimicking a little
36:30
Speaker 1: bit more of an I'm sorry. Look all you bird
36:32
Speaker 1: lovers out there who are cursing my name, I get it.
36:36
Speaker 1: It's just it's I hope, but I didn't mean to
36:40
Speaker 1: make it sound like the Exorcist voice or anything, you know,
36:43
Speaker 1: that was very wholesome. Man and Picks are like, you're right.
36:46
Speaker 1: So a year after the the the thirty years in
36:51
Speaker 1: question that was supposed to be the tenure of this study,
36:54
Speaker 1: Alex was gone. Mm hmm yeah. Why why wasn't that
37:01
Speaker 1: enough time to fully understand, you know, whether this stuff
37:05
Speaker 1: is real or not? Because it still seems like the
37:08
Speaker 1: jury is kind of outben Well, it's partially due to um,
37:13
Speaker 1: it's partially due to competing opinions about animal cognition, and
37:18
Speaker 1: also also one criticism people will levy this not us.
37:23
Speaker 1: This is criticism that gets brought up in the scientific community.
37:27
Speaker 1: They'll say, hey, this one person and their team spent
37:32
Speaker 1: three decades with this one instance of the gray parrot, right,
37:38
Speaker 1: and so maybe they started putting out signals that they
37:43
Speaker 1: were not aware of. Maybe they I mean, they certainly
37:46
Speaker 1: emotionally bonded. Pepperberg says that she was devastated when Alex
37:51
Speaker 1: passed away, unfortunately about fifteen years younger than most parts
37:57
Speaker 1: and captivity. But what this teaches us, this amazing story,
38:02
Speaker 1: whether you hate birds or you love them and wish
38:05
Speaker 1: you could turn into a bird wherever you are in
38:07
Speaker 1: the spectrum. What this shows us is that there is
38:10
Speaker 1: still a lot to be learned about the living world
38:15
Speaker 1: and about the other animals that we are so fortunate
38:18
Speaker 1: to spend time with today. I would say personally, I
38:24
Speaker 1: don't have them. I don't have the emotional space to
38:30
Speaker 1: have a parrot roommate, you know what I mean. I
38:33
Speaker 1: would like it to be more of an indoor outdoor cat.
38:36
Speaker 1: But we also know that in in ancient native communities,
38:41
Speaker 1: people were well aware of the tendencies. They also befriended
38:45
Speaker 1: uh these animals and respected their intelligence. And there's still
38:50
Speaker 1: so much to learn. The more we learn about the
38:54
Speaker 1: intelligence of other non human animals, the more humans learn
38:59
Speaker 1: about themselves, which is quite a beautiful thing. Agreed um
39:05
Speaker 1: so hughes thanks to research Associate Zachary Dr zach Williams
39:10
Speaker 1: Um for finding this topic and giving us something to
39:14
Speaker 1: chew on. Um like a like a weird hooked, beaked,
39:20
Speaker 1: winged creature might chew on a stick of seeds. You know,
39:25
Speaker 1: it's the thing they like, they seem to like and
39:28
Speaker 1: huge preemptive, proactive thanks to all our fellow ridiculous Historians
39:33
Speaker 1: who will be visiting the Ridiculous Historians Facebook page. Post
39:37
Speaker 1: your favorite funny, wholesome or creepy examples of Avian intelligence.
39:45
Speaker 1: We love to see them. Big thanks to Mr Max Williams,
39:48
Speaker 1: first of his name, uh big, Thanks of course, as
39:53
Speaker 1: always to our favorite part Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister,
39:57
Speaker 1: who else who else? Big? Thanks Deves, Jeff Go, Chris
40:00
Speaker 1: rossi Otis uh big. Thanks to you Know no man
40:06
Speaker 1: right back at you, and Max. Thanks to you for
40:09
Speaker 1: for all your gentle and approving faces you've been making.
40:12
Speaker 1: I've really felt seen on this one. Be good. We'll
40:16
Speaker 1: see you tomorrow. Until next time. For more podcasts for
40:26
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
40:29
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows