Can a parrot understand complex concepts and mean what it says?
Since the early 1900s, most studies on animal-human communication
have focused on great apes and a few cetacean species. Birds were
rarely used in similar studies on the grounds that they were merely
talented mimics--that they were, after all, "birdbrains."
Experiments performed primarily on pigeons in Skinner boxes
demonstrated capacities inferior to those of mammals; these results
were thought to reflect the capacities of all birds, despite
evidence suggesting that species such as jays, crows, and parrots
might be capable of more impressive cognitive feats.
Twenty years ago Irene Pepperberg set out to discover whether
the results of the pigeon studies necessarily meant that other
birds--particularly the large-brained, highly social parrots--were
incapable of mastering complex cognitive concepts and the rudiments
of referential speech. Her investigation and the bird at its
center--a male Grey parrot named Alex--have since become almost as
well known as their primate equivalents and no less a subject of
fierce debate in the field of animal cognition. This book
represents the long-awaited synthesis of the studies constituting
one of the landmark experiments in modern comparative
psychology.
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