🕯️ LEGENDS GARDEN
🦜 Alex
Congo African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) · Irene Pepperberg's avian cognition lab, latterly at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
Lives in Legends Garden
Alex hatched on 18 May 1976 and was bought from a pet shop at about a year old by the comparative psychologist Irene Pepperberg, who named him for the Avian Learning Experiment he was about to become. Over thirty years he learned to label 50 objects, seven colours, five shapes and quantities up to six, and to grasp a zero-like idea of 'none' - answering test questions correctly about 80 percent of the time. He is the only non-human animal on record to have asked a question about itself: looking into a mirror he said 'What color?' and, after hearing the answer six times, learned the word grey. His death in September 2007 was covered worldwide and made him the reference point every talking-parrot video has been measured against since.
What they do
Cocks his head hard to one side, opens his beak twice as he speaks, then snaps his head level again - a three-frame talking head-tilt on loop..
Bossy, impatient and entirely convinced he was the one running the experiment.
Lore
- ★'Alex' was an acronym for Avian Learning Experiment; Pepperberg bought him from a pet shop when he was around a year old.
- ★Looking at his reflection he asked 'What color?' - the only recorded instance of a non-human animal asking an existential question about itself.
- ★He could identify 50 objects, 7 colours and 5 shapes, count to six, and understood a zero-like concept of absence.
- ★His nightly goodbye to Pepperberg, said the evening before he died, was 'You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow.'
Helping the real one
💛 Support Alex via The Alex FoundationThe 501(c)(3) Irene Pepperberg founded in Alex's name; it funds ongoing grey parrot cognition research and parrot welfare work. Donate page fetched and confirmed working. This opens their own official page. Money never touches this site.
Where this comes from
- ScienceDaily / Brandeis University Alex, the renowned African grey parrot, dies at 31 ↗
- Wikipedia Alex (parrot) ↗
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