Dead, Not Forgotten

The Alex Foundation announced that the famed and beloved African Grey parrot, Alex, was found dead this morning, September 7, 2007, of unknown causes. The cause of death is expected to be announced in a press conference on Monday.

It is reported that Alex was fine yesterday and his death was totally unexpected.

Alex was purchased by Dr. Irene Pepperberg in 1977 at a Chicago pet store. He has been the featured African Grey parrot in more than 30 years of research into the intelligence of African Grey parrots, most recently at the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

Though he had his detractors, such as Noam Chomsky who called Alex’s talents “operant conditioning”, Alex’s intelligence is quite amazing. As far back as 2002 Alex had a vocabulary of more than 100 words and as far back as 1999 he could “identify 50 different objects and cognize quantities up to 6; that he could distinguish 7 colors and 5 shapes, and understand the concepts of “bigger”, “smaller”, “same”, and “different,” and that he was learning “over” and “under” according to the New York Times.

Wonderful stories about Alex came not only from his intelligence but also from his charm and humor. One episode that sticks with me involves a press conference where Dr. Pepperberg was trying to get Alex to identify the shape and color of an object she was hold in front of him. He gave her the cold shoulder by not saying a word, and the press conference was falling flat. Pepperberg decided to leave the stage to get another African Grey, hoping it would help Alex lighten up and respond as hoped. No sooner had she left then Alex looked at the gathered press and said very quietly, into the microphone, to the delight of his audience, “Triangle. Purple.” It sure seems like he had more going for him than Noam thought.

Thanks, Alex, for showing humans — the one animal that thinks it isn’t an animal — that animals are intelligent, even Noam Chomshky.

I will publish Alex’s cause of death next week, when it is announced.

Click here for cause of death information

For more information:
Visit the Alex Foundation website

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Science, Linguistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.