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

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.