Alex, The Brainy Parrot Who Knows About Zero 435
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."
Article: The Brainy Parrot Who Knows About Zero (Score:5, Informative)
One of the really interesting things about Alex is that it had learned in the past that "none" meant a lack of information. And without any training, when Alex was asked to say how many green or red cubes were on a tray in front of him, he spontaneously said "none" when there was no cubes with this color. In fact, he was able to connect two different concepts, a lack of information and the absence of a quantity. Pretty brilliant parrot, isn't?
Before going further, below is a picture of Alex in front of his counting blocks (Credit: Brandeis University). And here is a link to a larger version (193 KB).
A 'cultured' hamburger
Now, let's look at how the researchers made the discovery that Alex possessed a "zero-like concept."
The story began when researchers started testing Alex to see whether he understood small numbers, between one and six. Zero wasn't expected of him. The researchers would lay out an array of objects of different colors and sizes, and asked questions such as "what color four?" -- meaning which color are the objects of which there are four.
Apparently, Alex was pretty good on these tests, until he got bored. So the researchers "found some more interesting toys to give as rewards." And here came the decisive experiment.
One of these apparent lapses occurred one day when an experimenter asked Alex "what color three?" Laid out before Alex were sets of two, three and six objects, each set differently colored. Alex insisted on responding: "five." This made no sense given that the answer was supposed to be a color.
After several tries the experimenter gave up and said: "OK, Alex, tell me: what color five?" "None," the bird replied. This was correct, in that there was no color that graced exactly five of the objects. The researchers went on to incorporate "none" into future trials, and Alex consistently used the word correctly, they said.
A few days after this article was published, Brandeis University decided to issue a press release adding that Alex was the "first bird to comprehend numerical concept akin to zero."
"It is doubtful that Alex's achievement, or those of some other animals such as chimps, can be completely trained; rather, it seems likely that these skills are based on simpler cognitive abilities they need for survival, such as recognition of more versus less," explained comparative psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg.
Dr. Pepperberg's research, which uses a training method called the model-rival technique, also holds promise for teaching autistic and other learning-disabled children who have difficulty learning language, numerical concepts and even empathy.
So far, results using this learning technique with small groups of autistic children have been very promising.
The latest research work about Alex and his comprehension of zero has been published by the Journal of Comparative Psychology in its May 2005 issue (Volume 119, Issue 2) under the name "Number Comprehension by a Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus), Including a Zero-Like Concept." You'll get to the abstract from this page (scroll to number #8).
A Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) that was able to quantify 6 item sets (including subsets of heterogeneous groups, e.g., blue blocks within groupings of blue and green blocks and balls) us
FTA (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you for the offer, Timothy.
Re:parrots islam (Score:1, Informative)
(I'm assuming, of course, that your post was not intended to be ironic. If it was, my Irony Meter just blew itself to bits.)
Re:parrots islam (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Symptom, not the cause. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:None vs. Unknown (Score:5, Informative)
It's kind of like condemning an experiment by reading one progress report, decades before the final report is available. And I say decades because Alex is 28 and African Grey parrots can live to be 65+ years old.
I just saw something last night on Animal Planet on the "Most Extreme" intelligent animals. Parrots were #1, specifically this bird Alex, who has been in training for almost 20 years, I think it is.
My dad has an African Grey whose name is Max. Max is not as intelligent as Alex, but he demonstrates a limited intelligence. Simple things like saying "come here" when he wants attention or saying "whoops" when he drops a piece of food. It isn't on par with the counting and identifying that Alex can do.
If you see video of Alex, it's totally amazing. He can identify what objects are made of (wood, metal, wool), he can identify colors (red, blue, yellow, green) and even count up to five--now including zero. He can even flip you attitude: "wanna go sleep" or "wanna go home" or "hungry" -- all in the middle of a training session.
More on Alex can be found here: http://www.alexfoundation.org/ [alexfoundation.org]
Alex's trainer for the past two decades, Dr. Irene M. Pepperberg, is a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab, as well: http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/ [mit.edu]
No way is it a parrot trick (Score:5, Informative)
If you can ask questions involving grammar, adjectives and nouns, and be able to change them around and STILL get correct answers, it is clearly not simple comparison tricks.
Autistic tricks are about simple store/recall of rote information, but there is no evidence here of simple store/recall mechanisms being involved. This is not some piece of amateur research over a weekend, this has been going on for 15 years with consistant and repeatable results.
Re:None vs. Unknown (Score:2, Informative)
I'm saying this because I read a while back an experiment where a crow was able to count up to 6 (I assume your bird can do the same).
How did they do it?
The scientists put food in a tunnel-type thing. They let 1-6 cats enter the tunnel. The crow sees them go in. Then the cats leave after a while, one by one.
The crow was able to realise when all cats were out when n_cats <= 6. For higher numbers of cats, the crow just randomly go in the tunnel, even if some cats are still in there.
So apparently the crow was able to keep track of up to 6 things.
Re:Hubris (Score:1, Informative)
Tofu and beans are both high in protein, and cooked well, can be quite tasty; I personally prefer them strongly to meat, in pure taste terms. They're not that complex; neither are many other foods prepared without animal products. Nutritionally, you can get everything you need from a diet without meat; in a purely vegan diet, you need B12 supplements, but should otherwise be ok if you eat a variety of foods (not combined in any particular way; it's just that a diet of pure rice and carrots isn't much healthier than one of pure ice cream and potato chips/crisps). Does anything taste exactly like meat? No, though some things are similar. Taste is, obviously, well, a matter of taste.
Plant foods take up less resources than animal foods. Animals need to eat several times as many food resources as they can end up producing; they take much more water; they produce much more waste. This is partially hidden from the consumer in first world countries by large government subsidies for the meat industry.
The only real problem, of the 3 stated above, is taste. I've been a vegan for over 4 years, and I don't miss meat; other people have assured me that they do, or would, or did, if they were not eating it.
New concept or new representation? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I have seen a video of this parrot (Score:3, Informative)
Re:parrots islam (Score:3, Informative)
Therefore it's particularly ironic that you chose this subject for your troll, given that the the word "zero" itself derives [reference.com] from the Arabic word sifr (see the etymology).
Of course, there's always the possibility that you were aware of this irony, but that looks somewhat unlikely to me.