Subject: Bird Brains
Date: Jun 24 10:30:46 1995
From: Jerry Broadus - jbroadus at pop.seanet.com


I noticed the message that Dennis forwarded (from other sources) yesterday
about the birds' possible cognitive abilities, especially the part about the
African Grey Parrot. Then, Scott Richardson posted the message mentioning
that Irene Pepperberg at the U. of Ariz., who works with African Grey
Parrots, had told him about *one* impressive bird, but didn't create the
impression that anyone would be talking to parrots anytime soon. That
stirred some little Grey cells of my own, and I remembered taping a
television segment about the "impressive" parrot. I found the tape, it was a
"20/20" segment from a few years ago, about the popular subject "does your
pet think". It had shots of seeing eye dogs "disobeying" the commands of
their owners to keep them from crossing a street in front of cars and the
like, and it also had a short video of Alex, one of Pepperberg's parrots at
(according to the show) Northwestern U. Alex certainly was doing some
impressive things: constructing three word sentences (I want banana) (I
like corn)and answering questions that apparently required him to recognize
differences and similarities between cutout shapes and objects.(Q :"how many
keys?" A: "two") (Q: "What different?" or "What same?" A: "Shape", "Color",
"Matter" "None", etc.). I also remember seeing several articles in magazines
about Alex and this work, which as I recall said Alex could apply previous
learning to new situations and choose some pretty good English words to
(apparently) describe the experience. I would be very curious to know where,
if anywhere, these experiments went.
-------------------------------------
Name: Jerry Broadus
jbroadus at seanet.com
901-16th. St S.W.
Puyallup, Wa. 98371
206-845-3156
Time: 20:18:56