PARROT CONVERSATIONS
While the rest of us will have turkey for Thanksgiving, researcher Irene Pepperberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson, will spend Thanksgiving with her parrot Alex–talking with Alex. Dr. Pepperberg purchased Alex when he was one year old. He is now twenty-two years old and talks with Dr. Pepperberg on a regular basis and answers in ways that suggest that the Parrot is conversing with her. Pepperberg believes her parrot has the intellectual capacity of a five-year-old and the emotional capacity of a two-and-a- half-year-old. Alex can identify fifty different objects, can recognize quantities of up to six, can distinguish seven colors, five shapes, and understands the concepts of bigger, smaller, same, and different. While most language experts say that the responses of animals have more to do with cues (known or unknown) from their trainers and less to with abstract reasoning, Pepperberg defends her training of Alex in that she structured her experiments to avoid cues and to frequently change…
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