Alex and Me

Jen treats us to a review this week of Alex and Me by Irene Pepperburg. An extraordinarily clever woman, Greenburg sets out to discover just how smart the African Gray Parrot – in this case, Alex – is. Greenburg establishes Alex as “a beacon in a world that underestimated him,” and, as is always the case in Jen’s reviews, makes us think about the bigger animal picture.

“Be Good. I love You.” These were the last words a 30-year-old African Grey parrot named Alex said to his owner, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, before he died. Get out the Kleenex now. What a wonderful bird.

I have a special place in my heart for African Greys. My Aunt had one and he was a piece of work. Nathan scared the pants off me the first time we met. He was in a cage in the sunroom when I walked through and he started making fire alarm noises. Then he started yelling, “Hat trick! SCOOOORE!” He sounded exactly like some strange man and I thought I was losing my mind.

He also made the sound of a ringing phone to get people to jump up and run for it. He mimicked the sound of my Aunt’s voice so perfectly that he’d call the dogs in her voice and watch them race around in a frenzy searching for her. Needless to say, I loved him.Pepperberg’s parrot learned to do more. After MIT and Harvard, she began an intensive study with Alex that changed the way people view bird brains. He could reason, he could grasp multiple ideas, he used humor and petulance to make his needs and desires known to all. He continually amazed people with his cognitive abilities that were highly unexpected in the scientific world of animal intelligence.

Alex taught his fellow parrots language and he became a beacon in a world that underestimated him. When Pepperberg began her studies, the closest brain to man was assumed to be the chimp. Because their brains resembled ours physically, it was presumed that other animal brains could not match their capabilities.

Wrong.

Alex may have had a brain the size of a walnut but he surpassed the chimp and proved he had abilities akin to a 5-year-old human child.Pepperberg’s experiments were groundbreaking and Alex became a wonder. An amazing creature. If he could exercise heretofore unknown gifts, what else can?

We are very wrong in our presumptive superiority. The animal world is as much a part of our world as we are. It would be a vast underestimation to assume we are alone in our ability to think. Man is part of a web and the more we understand about all creatures the better.