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Alex the African Grey Parrot Dies
grrlscientist writes "Yesterday, I received the devastating news that Alex the African Grey parrot, who was both a study subject and colleague to Irene Pepperberg, died unexpectedly at 31 years of age. 'Even though Alex was a research animal, he was much more than that. This species of parrot generally lives to be 50-60 years old, so Alex was only middle-aged when he died. According to some reports I have read, it is possible that Alex might have succumbed to Aspergillosis, a fungal infection of the lungs that he has battled in the past. However, the cause of death will not be known until after a necropsy has been completed... Alex's veterinarian is returning from vacation to personally conduct this necrospy.'"
Although this animal could do some fairly impressive things, I often felt she (Dr. Pepperberg) and her colleagues made too much of it. The constellation of things referred to by English speakers as "Language" is far too broad to be especially meaningful when applied to the behavior of a parrot. The behaviors of "speaking" and "listening" are better described as falling along a continuum as opposed to a skill that one either has or not.
And this is fairly important news because, from what I understand, most Alex's success has not been replicated with other birds. Hopefully this will prompt her and/or others to better describe the conditions under which animals (and humans) come to do things we refer to as language as opposed to simply cataloging differences between species which are all too easy to find.
Oh please, are you trolling? Firstly slashdot isn't a general news site, secondly there's always more "worthy" news to report, if we followed those criteria all news outlets would be 24/7 death and misery ... we're near enough to that already.
Sadly a bunch of Chinese miners dying isn't particularly unusual or newsworthy, either. That's what happens when you have hardly any safety measures at all.
Can you explain to me why this story isn't newsworthy? It's not like this was just someone's personal parrot. This was a very important and rather famous research animal. I've seen him on more than one TV show. I think I've seen him on the evening news once. I know he was a segment on an episode of Scientific American Frontiers with Alan Alda.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
this parrot was smarter and more intelligent than a certain percentage of /.ers. this is that kind of news.
no really, he was really, really overly smart. major geek stuff.
Read radical news here
For me, the sign of the decline of Slashdot isn't that they are posting articles on the death of Alex. It's that the readership thinks only articles about iPhones, CPUs and videogames are "news for nerds."
Or maybe, just maybe, he (like many Slashdotters, including myself) actually knew who Alex was, because a) he's famous and b) we have more varied interests than just whether Apple is going to release a new iPod or not.
Non-human intelligence is interesting for some of us, even if said non-humans don't come from another planet.
You missed "spontaneously offering up other little details in conversation" like he was interested in, and wanted to talk about the subject. I am sure it's on Youtube somewhere, the one when he's eating corn and they have a conversation about it.
And, making generalizations that far surpassed what some of the top dolphins have done, and what we are barely doing with chimps now.
Heck, I have met people in bars with less cognitive awareness than this bird.
I don't have modpoints and you're at +5 already, so let me instead say: BRAVO. Well said.
This sort of quirky, hard-to-categorise but somehow "of geeky interest" story is what brought me here. Sadly, in recent years, such stories have come along every few months, buried under a flood of flamebait RIAA/MS are evil / fanbait Google/Apple are glorious tripe, which are clearly just trolling for maximum ad impressions. And when they DO come along, someone pops up and complains they're not related to Halo 3 or whatever idiotic computer game is flavour of the month at the moment, and therefore not news for nerds.
These creatures were meant to fly free in their native rain forests
Creatures are not "meant" to do anything, unless you believe in an invisible friend in the sky who is pulling all of our strings like puppets.
As long as it's happy -- as long as any pet is happy, for that matter -- why does it matter if they're not living in their natural habitat? Just because there's one more parrot in the US doesn't mean there's one less in Africa. You should be attacking people who abuse them, not somebody who has given one a caring home.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Keeping a parrot != Keeping a parrot in a cage.
Mal's cage door only shuts at night. He has half of my entire living room to himself, a veritable jungle. He treats us like he'd treat his flock in the wild. And regardless of what you call "anthopomorphizing", his intelligence really is impressive, and we've tested it. A common demonstration that I'll do is to put a finger front of him and then say some random word. He does nothing. Then I'll say up, and he goes up. I can hold him over a trash can, and say "Go potty", and if he can go, he does right then. He really does solve the sort of puzzles that I described (I have video -- want to see it?), and he really, honestly does address us by name, and he really isn't happy if the wrong person comes. If I'm cooking dinner, 98% of the time, he calls for me ("Kareh!). If Elaine is, 98% of the time, it's for her. This isn't anecdotal; we've been paying extra attention to this. If this is some sort of "trick", as opposed to name recognition, I'd really like to know how he's pulling it off. I can take video if you need it.
Re, flying: he can still "fly", just not gain altitude. All that matters is that he not be able to make it to a kitchen burner or a ceiling fan. He can still cover the distance halfway across the house. Furthermore, Amazons are a lot more oriented to climbing than to flying (if you've ever looked at one, they're rather stocky birds). They love to climb (hence the standard advice to make sure that their cages have plenty of horizontal bars).
Anyways, who are you to tell me that even though my (captive raised) bird is demonstrably happy, that he'd somehow be better off starving and trying to dodge predators out in western Mexico (his native habitat)? Hey, you're a human -- your native habitat is the plains of east-central Africa. Want me to ship you back over there? Even if Mal was wild raised and knew how to survive out there (which he isn't; he'd die quickly), he'd undoubtedly be shunned by the other local parrots since he doesn't know their habits and they're very social, "community-oriented" animals.
Anyways, Mal just called Elaine (who is fixing breakfast) and said he wanted up. She just picked him up, and he just said, "Good Elaine!". Breakfast will be ready in just a minute, so I better get going.
By a scallop's forelocks!