Slashdot Mirror

Off topic, but when you have elephants that recognise themselves in the mirror, apes that can plan tool usage ahead of time, parrots that grasp the concept of zero, and so on, I'm personally honestly no longer convinced claims like this can be made so easily.

I got the news from another member of my bird club who knew that Dr. Irene Pepperberg did a demonstration with myself and my Grey for our club a few years ago.

Irene's research was instrumental in helping understand the cognitive ability of animals (ironicly, her research started out as trying to help brain damaged humans rebuild cognitive ability through Model/Rival training).

Irene has a big heart and I know she must be crushed from this loss.
If you want to support her research with her 3 other birds (lab space and research assistants aren't free), please donate a check made payable to:

The Alex Foundation MS/062
Department of Psychology
Brandeis University
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02454
Attn: Alex Memorial

The Alex Foundation is a 503c not-for-profit organization.

here are some interesting links about this organization

http://www.alexfoundation.org/
http://www.123compute.net/dreaming/knocking/alex.h tml

Nope, now she's at Brandeis University. Check it out: here or here.

Does the concept of "recognizing self by mirror" require the concept of "mirror?" If someone doesn't understand what a mirror does, then they may fail the test but actually be self-aware.

Brain injury patients teach us that there are circuits in the brain for things we wouldn't expect. A stroke patient lost the concept of "left." She could only eat half of a piece of cake in front of her -- her brain wouldn't recognize the other half. She learned to turn the plate, so that a piece of cake would magically appear! Doing this several times, the cake was essentially consumed.

If the concept of "left" can be lost, what about concept of "mirror?" A human may be capable of reasoning out that the person in the mirror must be me, but for creatures that are less intelligent, I'm not so sure.

One of our smarter parrots does not seem to recognize herself in the mirror. She attacks the mirror image. A second parrot seems to understand the concept of "camera." I once connected a video camera directly to the TV and videotaped him -- he began to experiment with moving and watching the parrot on the TV move. All of a sudden, he began to show off and...strut. Ever since then, he shows off for cameras and struts when he sees a photo of himself. He won't strut when he sees a parrot of his own species that is not him. (Note: I don't know if he's cueing on backgrounds to tell if the parrot is him or if he can identify himself.) He's the only parrot in the house that doesn't like anacondas on Animal Planet. Raptors also upset him. Most parrots don't watch TV, the refresh rate is too slow. But somehow he does.

I'd love to know how Alex the Parrot responds to "Who?" when looking at a mirror. One could start out by positioning the mirror so that someone else is visible, someone Alex could name. Then, by changing the angle of the mirror, have Alex look at Alex.

The training of Alex is an experiment which is constantly in progress. This isn't "bad science" but "science in progress."

It's kind of like condemning an experiment by reading one progress report, decades before the final report is available. And I say decades because Alex is 28 and African Grey parrots can live to be 65+ years old.

I just saw something last night on Animal Planet on the "Most Extreme" intelligent animals. Parrots were #1, specifically this bird Alex, who has been in training for almost 20 years, I think it is.

My dad has an African Grey whose name is Max. Max is not as intelligent as Alex, but he demonstrates a limited intelligence. Simple things like saying "come here" when he wants attention or saying "whoops" when he drops a piece of food. It isn't on par with the counting and identifying that Alex can do.

If you see video of Alex, it's totally amazing. He can identify what objects are made of (wood, metal, wool), he can identify colors (red, blue, yellow, green) and even count up to five--now including zero. He can even flip you attitude: "wanna go sleep" or "wanna go home" or "hungry" -- all in the middle of a training session.

More on Alex can be found here: http://www.alexfoundation.org/
Alex's trainer for the past two decades, Dr. Irene M. Pepperberg, is a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab, as well: http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/

Wanna cork nut?

There has been some interesting research on learning done in Dr. Pepperberg's lab. The odd aspect of it is that they are tackeling the learning issue by studing how African Grey Parrots learn. The Home Page is a place to start looking for information and think about teaching. Another example of how well these particular birds can hear and respond is here, and finally, there was an article in the SF Chronicle that discussed how intelligent the birds might be here. While I am tooting the horn for birds, we should also consider how they learn, because it is different that "normal" human patterns. This could be quite useful for learning disabilities when the normal avenues do not work.

As Dr. Pepperberg's Alex has shown, parrots are capable of cognitive feats normally associated with five year olds. At least three of ours are tool users and can use language to a limited degree - far better than any dog I've owned.

It's rather difficult to think of them as tools to be sacrificed.

So I asked Cirrus the African Grey what she thought of your idea. Cirrus' reply was "Pppppt!"

You're referring to Alex the Parrot. Dr. Pepperberg has been very careful to document in experiments what she claims for Alex, and to make sure that she can prove those claims experimentally. According to Dr. Pepperberg, Alex has not learned to read, despite what the article says. Instead, she says he has learned to associate sounds and shapes and to assemble them into words. No, I have no idea what the difference is between that and reading.

As far as whether parrots have souls, we have two African Grey parrots like Alex, and a Moluccan cockatoo who is incredibly mechanically inclined. I cannot define "soul" scientifically, although I do believe in them. What I associate with a human having a "soul," I also see in these parrots. They are intelligent, mischevious, sometimes selfish, loving, emotional, inquisitive, and tool-using. They like TV (would you believe "Animal Planet" is a favorite?), and sometimes pause to consider consequences of their actions. They do have impulse control problems, so they don't consider the consequences as often as one might hope. One of our parrots had great fun feeding those canned french fry things to a dog. They will lie to you, although it's easy to tell when they're lying. They would not be good at poker.

Having said that, I will also say that sometimes they are incredibly alien. They do not perceive the world quite the way we do (including vision that extends into the UV). They do not always think the way we do.

The last I heard, Dr. Pepperberg was working at MIT to create a mini-internet for parrots with a simplified interface. Boredom is a problem for these birds in captivity.

As the owner of an African Grey parrot, I see everyday how brain size affects communication and social cognition. My Grey tells me "Wanna go to bed" when she is tired, says "Want food", "Want water", "Want a toy", and want scratch whenever she wants one of these other things. She also identifies people by name. My grey (her name is Elmo. I thought she was male until she was DNA tested) also knows how to say "I love you". Earlier in the year, she started learning that women aren't all named the name of my ex-girlfriend. I have a female roomate and a girlfriend now and Elmo started listening for whoever was in the house at the time and saying "I love $PROPERNAME" Whenever she wanted to interact with that person and would also just call them by name.

I have a lot of other stories too. My slashdot name is based on the name "Weeboo" which is what Elmo named me for some reason.

If you want to read more about avian (specifically African Grey) cognitive ability, try going to www.alexfoundation.org to read more about an African Grey named Alex and Dr. Irene Pepperbergs research with interspecies communication and animal cognitive ability.

I was thinking of doing something like this myself. My motivation was slightly different though. I have an African Grey parrot named Elmo who likes to watch me work on my computer. I wanted to figure out a way to give my bird some sort of interface device (like one of those kiddy keyboards at CompUSA) and build a simple graphical interface maybe based on WindowMaker. I couldn't think of a good (parrot proof) keyboard that she could use, so I was thinking that maybe I could use voice recognition as a method of controlling the interface. I wanted to give her the choice of looking at pictures, watching video (maybe Teletubbies or Sesame Street), or listening to music.

This has already been done by a researcher at MIT. Dr. Irene Pepperberg has been researching the cognitive abilities of African Grey parrots for 20+ years. The basis for her research is a method of training called "Model/Rival" and the value of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards. She has an interface they called the Interpet explorer. The parrot uses a joystick to choose menu options. It's pretty cool.

Oh yeah, this isn't a belated April fools joke.

Fish could be interesting. I rescued a goldfish from a wedding reception and the thing lived for 3 years with my minimal care (let the tank go a little too long before cleaning it, sometimes forgot to feed him)

A year ago we inherited an african grey parrot. They're considered the smartest of birds and probably the smartest of animals that are relatively easy to keep in the house (read about Alex to see what they are capable of with training). They aren't a low maintenance pet though, they require personal interaction and they are loud, messy and destructive. However, they are a very rewarding pet to own and can be very entertaining. If you consider owning one (or another type of parrot) I'd reccomend reading up on them and talking to a few owners to get a better sense of what owning one is like.

And if TEOMA really wants to get ahead of Google, they would use the Intrapet Explorer" as their browser of choice.