SONICFROG DOT NET

Someone I Admired From Affar Has Passed Away.

OK. It was not so much a someone as a something… a parrot.

Alex, the African Grey, has passed away. Alex was a parrot that participated in some ground breaking research that changed the way science looked at the cognitive capacity of our avian friends. This amazing bird helped prove that many avians could distinguish between different shapes and colors, and think in ways previously relegated only to humans. Here is an example of an experiment. Dr. Irene Pepperberg, Alex’s human companion and research, would teach Alex to identify three same sized blocks with different colors; one blue, one green, one red. If she told Alex to pick up a block, say the red one, he would choose the right one. If a fourth unfamiliar block colored, say, yellow, was added to the group, and Alex was told to pick up the yellow one, he would chose the yellow one by a process of elimination. He knew what the other block colors were, but since the new block looked different, and had a different name, it is thought he determined it must be the right one. He had a fantastic vocabulary of 150 words, and was shown to understand the meaning or concept behind about 100 of those.

Good Bye Alex. You were an inspiration to us all.

PS. There will be more bird post coming right up.