Slashdot Mirror


Mathematical Parrot Reveals His Genius With Posthumous Paper

ananyo writes "Even in death, the world's most accomplished parrot continues to amaze. The final experiments involving Alex – a grey parrot trained to count objects – have just been published (abstract). They show that Alex could accurately add together Arabic numerals to a sum of eight, and correctly add three small sets of objects, putting his mathematical abilities on par with (and maybe beyond) those of chimpanzees and other non-human primates."

6 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alex is Dead? by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was (you insensitive clod).

    --
    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
  2. Re:Alex is Dead? by Reilaos · · Score: 3, Informative

    He's been dead for years. For four years, even.

  3. "No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting" by couchslug · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  4. Re:Sea animals? by miknix · · Score: 4, Informative

    How do dolphins and octopuses rank? I tried a search w.r.t. octopuses but didn't find anything (and wikipedia has nothing about it).

    Octopuses are the smartest invertebrates on Earth. I do sparrow fishing as hobby and they don't stop amazing me, from their ability to deploy decoy legs able to walk alone, annoying ink jets and their fantastic camouflage they are pretty good stealing items too! They should join thepiratebay!
    (it's a joke, I know the difference between stealing and copying)

  5. Re:Alex is Dead? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Informative

    Reading the thread for nostalgia purposes, is it weird to be bothered that I didn't notice a post years ago in the discussion on the ethics of bird-keeping someone saying their parrot didn't come from the rain forest because it's Australian? That I missed the chance to inform the nimrod that Australia has extensive rain forests and if not their specific bird then almost certainly the species hailed from those rain forests? That part of the problem with bird ownership is owners' ignorance about birds' natural habitats and behaviors?

    That's weird, right?

    I'm pretty sure that's weird.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  6. Re:Mathematical Parrot Reveals His Genius With Pos by Macgrrl · · Score: 1, Informative

    I think you mean 'passed', unless you are implying he got over the hate...

    --
    Sara
    Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World