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Alex, The Brainy Parrot Who Knows About Zero
Roland Piquepaille writes "Alex is a 28-year-old grey parrot who lives in a lab at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and can count, identify objects, shapes, colors and materials. And now, Alex has grasped the concept of zero, according to World Science. In fact, Alex can describe the absence of a numerical quantity on a tray containing colored cubes. When a color is missing, Alex consistently identified this 'zero quantity' by saying the label 'none.' You might think that this is just a parrot trick, but this research about 'bird intelligence' might also help autistic and other learning-disabled children 'who have trouble learning language and counting skills.' This overview contains other details, references and a picture of Alex counting his colored cubes."
This just goes how much we underestimate animals and overvalue ourselves. We'd like to believe that the evolution gap between us and every other species is too broad to be even fathomed, but it's simply not true. I know some people will reply and say that we all know that we came from apes, but I'm not talking about what we know, but how we act. We treat animals like they don't have emotions and that they aren't capable of the same types of understanding as us. In the future I imagine we are going to see that animals can do a lot of things we never though and are even better than us in some areas of intellect.
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My relatives have a african grey parrot and they are in fact really smart. They even seem to answer your questions (and complete sentences or phrases). Only thing is that they bite real hard so you might want to keep a distance while talking/playing with them.
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Read a book (I've got it right here) called Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. written by Charles Seife.
Here's how imporant zero is. without it and infinity, calculus would simply not exist in the form we have today. Pascal used Zero with probability (correct me if I'm wrong on that statement) to "prove" god existed. The Church used Zero to fight heretics. Without Zero, we'd not have concepts defining the absence of something by a number. Zero is versatile, just like Carlin and his spiel on the "F" word. Give the book a read, you'll love it.
ISBN 0-14-029647-6
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
And it is an incredible animal already without the concept zero. It labels objects by name and properties like color and shape. But also recognize objects which are similar like keys. There is no way for the researcher to hint the solution unconsiously like what happens with the famous counting of horses and dogs (The horse taps the foot X times for the correct answer, but in reality just looks for the right signs in the face or behaviour of the owner (smart too though, sociology (-: )).
The parrot is in this case better then men in understanding language. The researchers can not talk "parrot language", but this bird can talk human language. What would be great for research if they are able to find out if this parrot has a concept of language and can translate some more familiar environment things (like trees instead of keys) and see if that translates to other parrots in the wild.
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Don't diss ravens, they can make tools, sometimes more proficiently than apes ! I've seen one of these birds cut a small rectangle of spiky leaf to use as a hook to pull some juicy worms from a dead tree bark; and another cut a stick from a tree, remove the leaves then make one end into a hook for the same task, in mere seconds.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
So, I'm amazed at the avian capability, but surprised at humanity's clunky, late, and worshipful grasp of zero. I read, "Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife, and it took us a hell of a long time to get a simple survival idea to cross from instinct into formalized intellect.
I'm not a behavioral science PhD. Yet, How surprising is it that any animal can recognize zero in respect to color? How many yellow fruits are on that green tree? "None, next tree." How many gray mates are there on the brown branches? "None, next area." We have to think that the loser parrots who hung out at the tree with zero fruit didn't do so well in the evolution crap shoot.
Zero is not so mystically intelligent as we think. Our belly and lungs definitely understand zero. But zero came late to our number systems. Our formalization of zero might well be a mystical leap of intellect, but only history will prove if we are as smart as we think we are. There are a lot of zeros out there we aren't grasping; zero dodos left, zero ozone defense in places, and zero vaccines for modern plagues.
I look forward to the day when Alex and Mr. Bean learn to solve calculus. Then he can exclaim that the limit of e^x as x approaches infinity is infinity. Negative numbers and imaginary numbers and he'll be doing better than most undergrads.
It should be noted Mr. Bean's QWERTY typing is abominable. So his C programming is not as strong as other posts might have suggested.
It was already clear that Alex was capable of determining the result of permutations that he had never been exposed to previously even if he was familiar with the individual elements.
What is now clear is that Alex can derive vocabulary for permutations that do not match recognized combinations.
The derivation of values for words is something that diferrentiates deduction from association. Alex was able to deduce (presumably from observation) that "none" was a valid word and what it meant.
This makes sense, as 99% of Alex' training IS by example. Two humans run the tests between themselves, Alex observes. One of the humans then carries out similar tests with Alex, to see if he has learned from his observations.
The idea that he may have learned from unintended training sessions is therefore no great surprise. What would be a great surprise is if this is all he has learned. I think the researchers should try to see what else Alex has discovered. Before he starts sending out blackmail notes.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Alex was taught "none" to describe when two blocks of different colors but the same size were presented and Alex was asked "Which color bigger?" In that case, Alex used the word "none" to indicate that they were the same size.
To go from using "none" to indicate that there was no difference to use it to indicate that there were no items of the described characteristics is a small leap for an adult human, but very difficult for small human children and parrots.
Non-human primates can't make that kind of jump. In some ways, Alex, with the brain the size of a walnut, is smarter than an ape with a much bigger brain! Of course, evolution would have selected for a low-weight, highly effective brain in birds because of the weight cost of flying.
Based on what's described in the newest article, I actually suspect that Alex was looking for a word to express just this concept, or something like it. He may have had the concept before he had a word to describe it.
Pepperberg, by the way, knows that she is working in a suspect realm of science. If she cannot document something with experimental evidence that holds up under statistical analysis, she won't say it. That also means that her scientific writing is almost impossible to parse. It's great research, but if you read too much of it, your eyes will bleed.
The best example is the proof that Alex can be ornery. Anyone who owns a parrot knows the #$%^ birds are ornery. But when Alex acted up and proceeded to answer questions wrong, Alex went through every possible answer except the correct one. Pepperberg showed that the probability of that happening by chance was extremely unlikely, and that the only reasonable explanation was that Alex was deliberately answering incorrectly.
One last thing: If Alex is simply answering questions, Alex has an accuracy rate of about 80%. If Alex is competing with another parrot or someone Alex doesn't like, the accuracy goes up to 100%. When attempting to give incorrect answers, again, the accuracy is 100%
There is no doubt in my mind that Alex considers the humans around him to be the inferior species, to be messed with at will. If Pepperberg thinks that as well, she won't say it...until she can prove it conclusively with experiments and statistics.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
i saw a crow drop a walnut into an intersection from a street light. the crow then flew down to the side walk, WAITED FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE, then walked into the intersection to collect the edibles from the car-crushed walnut. he let out a loud in disapproval of how quickly the light had changed again as he was forced to retreat from the street and his score.
"There was no sex." - hoggoth
Alex has zero and little prairie dogs - the universal lunch - have a complete language, including words for color!!!
i on.htm
http://www.prairiedog.info/Prairie_Dog_Communicat
"Basically, prairie dogs are a universal lunch item. Everybody likes to feed on prairie dogs," says animal behaviorist Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University. And the prairie dogs know that. When a predator approaches they emit a series of warning chirps.
Prairie dogs can talk. At least that's the startling conclusion reached by Slobodchikoff. His research flies in the face of conventional scientific thinking on the subject of animal intelligence. He maintains that prairie dogs can convey complex information through a language more sophisticated than that of any animal ever studied. Slobodchikoff has documented more than 100 prairie dog words all revolving around the same subject: predators. From his observation tower on the edge of a prairie dog colony outside Flagstaff, Slobodchikoff operates a directional microphone, a tape recorder and a video camera. From this vantage point, he can spot intruders, such as hawks, cats, dogs, and men and record the alarm calls these potential threats trigger in the prairie dogs.
"Each time we do experiments I'm surprised because each time even I don't think these animals have the capabilities that our experiments show them to have," says Slobodchikoff.
Back at his lab he digitizes his audio field tape into sonograms which show what each alarm call "looks" like, complete with adjectives.
The professor has discovered that prairie dogs use adjectives to differentiate objects. For example, they can describe the color of clothes on a human and whether he is tall or short. They can also describe how fast a man is moving or whether he is carrying a gun. And there's evidence that the animals can remember that specific person for up to two months.
Each prairie dog colony appears to have its own dialect, much like New Yorkers sound different from Southerners. But researchers believe the basic language is the same. That is, a prairie dog from Arizona could talk to a prairie dog from New Mexico.