Talk:Alex (parrot)/Archive 1

Wild parrot vocalization
Media reported that wild parrots have individual-specific calls which they use as names. I edit out bit about wild parrots. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.14.19.45 (talk • contribs).

Broken Link
The link referring to Alex having a concept of 0 is broken.

Also, an interesting sidenote: Irene Pepperberg used the mirror test on African gray parrots, though Alex was disqualified because some students seeking to entertain Alex told Alex to look in the reflection and say "That's Alex." Her two candidates both failed the test. This doesn't necessarily mean though that all parrots fail the test - I believe Koko the gorilla passes it even though other gorillas do not. Simfish 01:28, 19 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Self image recognition is apparently a very difficult thing to grasp in the entire animal kingdom —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.76.30.78 (talk • contribs).

Link repaired two minutes ago. Athænara  ✉  05:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Inconsistency
In the beginning of the article, Alex is purported to have a vocabulary of 100 words. Further down in the text, that number jumps to 1000. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.240.18.81 (talk • contribs) 00:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The discrepancy is between the number of words Alex uses in context - those words which appear to have specific meaning for him (about 100), with the words Alex "parrots" without apparent meaning (which is about 1000). Alex sits and babbles in English for much of the day, and uses all kinds of words he's overheard, but which aren't considered part of his "vocabulary." For example, one of Alex's favorite phrases is "you be lunch, I'll be tomorrow" which is parroted from phrases he hears often such as "I'm going to lunch" "You be good" "I'll be back tomorrow." This doesn't mean, however, that Alex has any idea of what the word "lunch" means, and so it isn't considered part of his vocabulary. By contrast, he only uses the word "blue" when asked to describe blue objects, he doesn't sit around randomly naming colors.

That's a long-winded way of saying the 100 number is correct, and the larger number is unnecessary for the purpose of this article. --Camipco 06:27, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * no. most parrots, who are not trained in the manner of alex, but speak by mimicry alone, are typically given vocabulary numbers by their owners. that would be like saying alex has a vocab of 100 words, but most other parrots that talk have a vocab of zero words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.144.37.157 (talk) 01:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ripley's
I just saw Alex featured on Ripley's Believe it or Not! Episode 1009 on a scifi channel rerun. Might be worth mentioning. --Stux (talk) 21:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Missing quote/refutation of criticism?
I'll always remember "banerry", his name for apple (looks like a cherry, tastes like a banana &#091;to a bird at least]). This seems like pretty good evidence of comprehending language, synthesizing new words. --Belg4mit 17:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"The Alex Studies" (Pepperberg, Irene Maxine, Harvard University Press, Massachusettes, 1999) goes into depth describing the experimental techniques used to train and evaluate Alex. These techniques were designed to eliminate the effects of things like Clever Hans and rote learning. Even the news articles about the use of a zero-like concept demonstrate the Clever Hans effect could not be occurring. The experimenter did not realize the correct answer was "zero" and would not have asked the question had that been known. The only reason Alex's use of the zero concept was ever discovered was because Alex was not using the "Clever Hans effect." While I'm at it, should "The Alex Studies" be added to the page somehow? I'm not sure where it would go. --UnSpace (talk) 23:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Abuse
Other experts suspect that Alex was subjected to emotionally abusive behavior, as seen in a National Geographic documentary hosted by Alan Alda.[13] In the documentary, Dr. Pepperberg repeatedly prompts Alex by hitting his beak, and subjects Alex to ridicule.

That´s blatantly false. I've seen the video, and there are no experts in it saying that Alex is abused. Those are merely the conclusions of the editor of that paragraph.Andrev 15:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Does she hit his beak and subject him to ridicule? We could include that if it's factual.   delldot   talk  15:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * As long as we state it's in the video, not that experts suspect it, I totally agree with delldot. - Mgm|(talk) 21:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That beak can break a wooden stick of 2cm diameter in seconds, a gentle touch hardly qualifies as abuse —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.33.1.37 (talk) 11:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

As the owner of two African grey parrots (one acquired in 1994, the other in 1996), I know that, during play, these birds will pound on objects with their beaks. I just re-watched the 2001 video with Alda (http://www.pbs.org/saf/1201/video/watchonline.htm). Pepperberg is briefly offering the toy (the spoon, for example) and taking it away. Mostly, Alex attempted to grab the toy with the beak. Sometimes, the object tapped Alex on the beak rather than him grabbing it. Alex, with reflexes superior to a human's, appears to not want to make the effort to grab the toy. He knew he wouldn't be given it at that point and so he just left the spoon bounce off. Watch the video -- it wasn't abusive. Were Pepperberg abusive, Alex would have been a poor study subject and Pepperberg wouldn't have put her face so near him. The AG beak can indeed make short work of a stick -- or nose, lip or eye. --UnSpace (talk) 00:06, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Alex and Me
This book is non-fiction, not a novel (Harper Collins 2008). Verligne (talk) 00:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

missing information
I read this article to see if Alex was a Timneh African Gray Parrot or A Congo. I see no references to this at all. I also note that no one mentions how when he was identifying objects he had not seen before, he was correct more often than when he was using familiar objects.--Brack 13:44, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Main problem with experimenting with intelligent animals
I notice that the criticism section is short and too general. The main problem with experimenting with "intelligent" animals happens when the experimenter is in the same room with the animal during experiments. A popular film clip showing experiments with a chimpanzee clearly shows the chimp looking at the experimenter's face. As soon as the experimenter looked at the target object, the chimp immediately reached out and touched it. When the experimenter resisted her desire to look at the target object herself, the animal did nothing. The tension built for a few seconds. Finally the experimenter looked and the chimp touched. Even if I had been the only person in the world to observe this flaw, it could have been avoided by blindfolding the experimenter, or even better by removing her from the room. Has anyone watched the videos to see if Pepperberg remains in the room with Alex? Such simple mistakes in doing science should disallow sweeping claims of intelligent behavior. David Spector (talk) 11:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "The Alex Studies" (Pepperberg, Irene Maxine, Harvard University Press, Massachusettes, 1999) goes into depth describing the experimental techniques used to train and evaluate Alex. These techniques were designed to eliminate the effects of things like Clever Hans and rote learning. Besides which, conjecture and OR observations have no place in the article.121.73.221.187 (talk) 12:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

"Outrage from LGBT activists"- hoax?
Couldn't help but notice a sentence added to Alex's "accomplishments" section today- the same section that made it to the front page of Reddit today, by the way: "His usage of pronouns was very conservative, however. In one incident, he referred to a transitioning MTF woman as "he", sparking an outrage among LGBT activists."

This is attributed to a previously included, textual source, so I can't check it. But, considering the considerable Reddit-hosted backlash to the type of modern political correctness and "liberal outrage culture" associated with competing social media site Tumblr, it seems rather likely this was added as a joke. An entertaining joke, but a factually incorrect and misleading one nonetheless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.73.204.78 (talk) 21:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Simply assuming that it's a joke with no evidence pointing to the fact that it's false doesn't permit its removal. While your worries are noted, there needs to be more proof than just implicating some sort of general hate onto the Reddit community as a whole. 100.9.138.180 (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

"Simply assuming that it's a joke with no evidence pointing to the fact that it's false..." - The burden of proof is not on article editors to disprove an absurd-sounding statement. It's on the person who wants it to stay there to provide a decent citation. 192.0.158.152 (talk) 04:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Bias in favor of animals as smart as people
The entire point of the article seems to be to prove that animals are just as smart as humans - or close enough. This is part of the general POV that humans "are" animals and that there is a continuum along which we have evolved - rather than any qualitative leap which separate us from the other creatures. These viewpoints should be mentioned explicitly, rather than just assumed.

Also, there is no mention at all of independent review, i.e., attempts by other researchers to replicate the results. A bedrock principle of science is that any new theory or finding is not considered valid until and unless the scientific community finds that anyone can get the same results. Simply being published in a journal does not make something science (see synchronization of menstrual cycles). --Uncle Ed (talk) 11:06, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

[This section is obviously written by a creationist.] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.201.154.215 (talk) 00:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Militant atheist here. Given evolution - which is true of course - either one is a panpsychist (which is ludicrous - an abacus is conscious? really?), or an emergentist. The second implies that there is no such thing as evolutionary continuum of consciousness, and it is taken care of by the anthropic principle rather than evolution. This is a view of Noam Chomsky, John Searle, and mine - all atheists and naturalists. So no, that wasn't necessarily written by a creationist. Strecosaurus (talk) 18:12, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Strong wishful thought?
The sentence proclaiming that it has *asked* the question is both extremely strongly worded and unsupported (the relevant passage from the original book only reports what it *did* without evaluation of whether it was a conscious question and not merely parroting). Furthermore, the next link, as is now a general consensus following the experiments with Nim Chimpsky etc, states in no uncertain terms that since it's a non-human animal, it couldn't have possibly asked a question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strecosaurus (talk • contribs) 18:07, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

To explain, this doesn't imply creationism, as I've just noticed was suggested in the discussion above. I'm a militant atheist, for the record. Given evolution - which is true of course - either one is a panpsychist (which is ludicrous - an abacus is conscious? really?), or an emergentist, with respect to one's stance on consciousness. The second implies that there is no such thing as evolutionary continuum of consciousness, and it is taken care of by the anthropic principle rather than evolution. This is a view of Noam Chomsky, John Searle, and mine - all atheists and naturalists. Chomsky believes, for instance, that the Universal Grammar was installed at once by a brain wiring megamutation. However unlikely that emergence was, this is precisely the kind of thing the anthropic principle is good at taking care of. In the opposite direction, this implies that Alex couldn't possibly have actually asked the question; and even if this hypothesis is wrong, it is at least contingent (compatible with facts), therefore one cannot *state as a fact* that it did. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strecosaurus (talk • contribs) 18:21, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Asper levels?
I was wondering what "asper levels" were in the following sentence: All of his tests, including his cholesterol level and asper levels, came back normal earlier that week However, the link goes to Aspergillosis. It doesn't seem to tell me what that word means. NotYourFathersOldsmobile (talk) 10:47, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Some corrections from Dr. Pepperberg
After publishing this blog post about Alex on the Wikimedia blog, I received an e-mail from Dr. Pepperberg with some notes and corrections about Alex's life. I wanted to share her notes here too, in case some of what she mentioned is relevant to the content of this article. She wrote:


 * 1) I bought Alex after I had finished my PhD in theoretical chemistry, with the intent of studying his cognitive and communicative abilities.
 * 2) When a student (or a parrot) answers a question about an object correctly, they receive THAT OBJECT...this point is CRUCIAL, because it is the ONLY way that they can make the direct connection between the object and the label that they have used. The reason other training techniques failed is because the trainers DID use food rewards, and because the subjects got the same food reward no matter what they said, they never learned to understand the meanings of their labels.
 * 3) Trainers made mistakes so that Alex would see the consequences of an incorrect identification.. the trainer was scolded and the object removed. Alex corrected other PARROTS in the lab, not the trainers. He would, however, say "no" and toss back an object if a trainer gave him something other than what he requested.
 * 4) His use of "none" was another CRITICALLY important event...he may have been bored, but what he did was figure out how to manipulate me into asking the question he wished to answer (showing an important level of awareness) AND that he had taken the concept of absence from the absence of similarity and difference between two object or the absence of a size differential between two objects and TRANSFERRED IT...WITHOUT THE TRAINING NEEDED FOR OTHER NONHUMANS....to the absence of a set of objects...a ZERO-LIKE CONCEPT!!!!!
 * 5) I haven't written "several" papers on the research, but dozens....in peer-reviewed journals.

I hope that helps. --Selsharbaty (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 8 December 2016 (UTC)