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Alex, The Brainy Parrot Who Knows About Zero

Posted by timothy on from the puppet-on-a-string dept.

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."

2 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bah by koreaman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Oops... I've spent too long on stupid bulletin boards where you can't use HTML. s/[i]parrots[/i]/parrots/

    --
    Le français vous intéresse?
  2. Re:Scientists got their hopes up by jonfelder · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    NEW BREAKING NEWS!!!

    It turns out Holand Piquepaille is actually infamous slashdot whore Roland Piquepaille.

    Discuss.