The Internet For Parrots

AndrewD writes: "Picked this up from the print edition of New Scientist. It's about the development of web browsers for animals, in this case a 17-month-old african grey parrot. Here is the researcher's site." This does explain all that aol.com traffic.

Comments

Alex the Parrot

[Macaw2000]

A while back I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Irene Pepperberg, an animal behavior scientist, talk about Alex the parrot and some of her other African Grey parrots.

Dr. Pepperberg would hold out a tray of various objects and ask Alex how many red squares or ask him what a key was made out of ... "4 red squares"... "metel key" ... Alex sounded out. It was really quite amazing. He understood concepts like same and different as well.

What I found amusing was that Alex performed all of the intelligence tests normally given to chimpanzees, small children, smart dogs, elephants, and dolphins. Of course Alex passed these tests with flying colors showing a theoretically greater intelligence. This was very conflicting to the animal behaviorists because they had always relied on two givens:

1. Small animals with small brains will have less intelligence.
2. Animals closer to humans in the evolutionary tree will have higher intelligence (aka chimps)

So here we have Alex who can easily be compared to a 5-year-old child but is stuck in a tiny body of beak and feathers. Poor Dr. Pepperberg was ostracized by the rest of the scientists because her well published findings didn't gel with the prevailing theories.

Now African Grey's are getting more attention and a whole new monkey wrench has been thrown in the mix. That monkey wrench being quaker parrots. These pint-sized peckers are less than 1/3rd the size of an African Grey and have much of the same intelligence. These resiliant little guys are the only parrot banned in 15 states because the ag boards feel they might get out and eat the crops. In fact the Argentine government recently killed 450,000 of them fearing their numbers were too great. Consider the political ramifications of killing that many chimps or elephants or dolphins? Remember these little green birds are more intelligent. Interesting, eh?

Ok so if you want to read more about Dr. Pepperberg you can visit here: http://www.cages.org/research/p epperberg/index.html or you can catch her on the discovery channel every once in a while with Alex.

Re:Alex the Parrot

[jamiemccarthy]

"...Parrots are doing no more than repeating what they've learned to do via positive re-inforcement. It doesn't take too many tries to find out that if you are told 'blue metal' and you pick up the metal key (being that the only item on the table that is blue is also the only item that is metal) -- you get a treat. This seems like nothing more than conditioning to me."

Not so. http://www.mecca.org/~rporter/PA RROTS/grey_al.html:

"The sets of objects need not be familiar, nor need they be placed in any particular pattern, such as a square or triangle. Furthermore, if presented with a heterogeneous collection -- of X's and Y's -- he can respond appropriately to questions of either 'How many X?' or 'How many Y?' (62.5%, all trials; 70.0%, first trials).27 Our work with heterogeneous collections has suggested even more advanced skills. Alex can be shown a 'confounded number set' (collections of four groups of items that vary in two colors and two object categories -- e.g., blue and red keys and cars) and be asked to label the number of items uniquely defined by the combination of one color and one object category (e.g., 'How many blue key?').39 His accuracy (83.3%) replicates that of humans in a comparable study performed by Trick and Pylyshyn.38 Although we cannot claim that the mechanisms that Alex uses are identical to those of humans, the data suggest that a non-human, nonprimate, nonmammalian subject has a level of competence that, in a chimpanzee, would be taken to indicate a human level of intelligence.2,27"

2. Pepperberg, I.M.: An investigation into the cognitive capacities of an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). In Advances in the Study of Behavior. Edited by P.J.B. Slater, J.R. Rosenblatt, and C. Beer. New York, Academic Press, 1990.

27. Pepperberg, I.M.: Evidence for conceptual quantitative abilities in the African Grey parrot: Labeling of cardinal sets. Ethology 75:37-61, 1987.

38. Trick, L., & Pylyshyn, Z. Subitizing and the FNST spatial index model. University of Ontario, COGMEM#44 (Based on a paper presented at the 30th Psychonomic Society Mtg, Atlanta, GA, November, 1989).

39. Pepperberg, I.M. Numerical competence in an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). J. Comp. Psych., 108:36-44, 1994.

Irene Pepperberg's work has been published not just in popular press like Scientific American but in peer-reviewed journals such as those in the footnotes above, so I have to assume it has met their standards for scientific work. She and her team have clearly addressed the concerns you raise, and others besides.

Jamie McCarthy

Grant money?

[griffjon]

OK. I PROMISE that I can find a more beneficial project for mankind, can I get the grant money for this project? No, I don't know what my own goal will be, but c'mon--gimme some credit. I can beat out web browsing parrots.

Re:Uhm...why?

[carlos_benj]

this january discover magazine had a really fascinating article about alex, a 23-year old african grey. if what its researcher/owner says is true, it demonstrates (or at least is able to express) intelligence greater than any primate i've read about.

Here is a link to an article about Alex from the current article referenced in this story. http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinion.jsp?id =ns222113

Karma?

[djKing]

I'm wondering how much karma the parot would colect on slashdot.

"Linux is faster than NT"
"Java should be GPLed"
"Music should be free"
"John Katz sucks"
"Pouring Hot Grits"

I'm sure we could teach it these simple lines. It would fit right in with the rest of us.

-Peace
Dave

Obvious flaw in this setup

[pingflood]

How on Earth are we going to get the parrots to *not* accept cookies? :-) Man, DoubleClick must love these guys.

-pf

why now?

[wishus]

Of all the technological advances of the past century (autos, television, the personal computer, etc.) why are we just now realizing that we've been leaving the animals out?

Did it take something as big as the internet to wake us up? Get our head out of the clouds? Stop inventing things without regard for anything else, and take a look at our animal bretheren?

I think this MIT guy has it right! It's time to bring the animals with us into the new millenium! No longer will we leave them behind in primitive isolation!

And since the internet is such a great wealth of knowledge, if we can get animals internet access, then they can learn about everything from driving a car to watching tv to making their own homepage!

Just think if your neighbor's cat could surf the 'net all night long! No more midnight screeching! And what if those pesky squirrels could check their e-mail without too much hassle? They'd be more likely to leave your bird feeder alone!

My one problem with this guy is that I think he should have started with mammals.. i think the interface would be easier, since we are mammals too.
---

Re:Knowing Words != Reading/Listening?

[Alik]

Two thoughts:

1) Introspect on your own knowledge of words. Most people have a sense that there's a bit more than just an association between a sound sequence and a set of physical objects --- there's a sense of understanding that this is not just any set of tones, this is a word, and it is attached to an abstract concept. How on earth will you teach a parrot what love is? What hate is? The definition of "taste"? This is the difference between a human and a parrot: you can teach a human new words using only other words. To teach a parrot new words, you must present physical objects (if you want the words associated with things).

2) Ability to use single words or memorized phrases is not language, and ability to see a word on a page and say that word is not the complete definition of reading. Language has syntax. No animal to date has ever demonstrated the ability to learn or use syntactic constructions. From your description, your sister was not using syntax yet. (Look at it another way: if I taught you five Chinese phrases without giving you meanings, but you knew that certain phrases would get Chinese people to give you food if you said them at the right time of day, would you claim to speak Chinese? (Of course, that raises the question of just how many of these phrases you'd need to know before you did actually have a functional understanding of Chinese. Read about the "Chinese Room Argument" if you care.))

Knowing Words != Reading/Listening?

[waldoj]

From this article:
But does he know what the words mean? Hasn't he just learned to associate particular sounds with particular objects or places?

I hate this. What are words but sounds that we've associated with things? My mother taught me and my twin brother to read at age 2. My kid sister could read simple words at 7 months. We'd have guests over, and they'd look at my not-yet-walking sister reading (I was about 6 years old), and say it was cute, or funny, but many people refused to acknowledge that she was reading. "Oh, she's just associated the shapes of the letters on the flashcards with nouns and verbs," they'd say. "She's not actually reading."

If that's not reading, and if Alex doesn't know what those words mean, then I must have a fundamental misunderstanding of language. Which is quite possible.

-Waldo

My Parrot Uses Mozilla

[bughunter]

My parrot already uses the internet. He gets along quite well with Mozilla on a PII linux box, although I do have to set up the button bar, and configure the network drivers.

Problem is, he's figured out how to access the root account, and even though he's disabled all the unused ports, changed all the default passwords, and installed the latest security patches...

I can't get him to perform regular backups!

What, the Norwegian Blue?

[MustardMan]

Ah, yes the Norwegian Blue... whats, uh, whats wrong with it.

I'll tell you whats wrong with it my lad... it's dead, thats whats wrong with it!

Its not dead, its pining for Yahoo

Look my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm lookin at one right now

He's not dead, he's waiting for AOL to dialup

allright then, I'll let him use my cable modem

look! he surfed!

he didn't surf, that was you banging the keyboard

I didnt!

Look my lad, this parrot is definitely deceased, and when I pinged it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of response was due to it being tired and lagged out after a long fragfest

31337 bird, the norwegian blue, beautiful rootkits!

the root kits don't factor into it my lad, it's stone dead
this parrot is no more
it has ceased to IRC
it's expired and gone to meet its Admin
bereft of pr0n it rests in peace
if you hadnt signed it on napster it would be freeing up a modem.
this, is an EX SURFER.

sorry, it had to be done

Great

[styopa]

The last thing I need to have to deal with is coming home from the lab only to find the parrot, that I plan on buying, has downloaded 1 gig worth of parrot porn.

Or that he's ordered a mail order parrot from Africa with my credit card.

This is way out of line.

[Skald]

It's about the development of web browsers for animals, in this case a 17-month-old african grey parrot. Here is the researcher's site." This does explain all that aol.com traffic.

I'm sorry, I find this totally offensive.

To parrots.

stupid mind reading animals

[TheDullBlade]

How does a parrot count items?

If he's anything like a good counting horse, he starts "counting" and reads the humans' reactions around him. If the animal pauses often, or moves a bit toward one thing, then another, in turn, instead of going directly to the correct choice, this is probably what's happening.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

(hmm, he asked me something, I know that tone of voice, I COULD GET A CARROT OUT OF THIS!)
clop,
clop,
clop,
pause,
(he tensed up, I can't stop yet...)
clop,
pause
(he just relaxed! if I stop now, he'll give me the carrot!)
stop.

"That's a good horse, here's your carrot!"

The real story...

[Shoeboy]

I worked on this project, so I can give you the real scoop. The web browser is simply proof of concept, what we were really going for was an IDE that could be used by most vertebrates.

It's simple really, a sufficient number of monkeys given sufficient time can produce working code. The problem is that between MS and AOL, we don't have anything close to a sufficient number of monkeys. A properly trained monkey can demand upwards of $80,000/yr in silicon valley. Traditionally monkey dominated industries like USWest customer service can't even afford them and have resorted to magic 8 balls.

By outsourcing development to non-primate species, we'll end the current labor crunch in IT.

This is truly revolutionary news.

--Shoeboy