The Challenge Has Been Issued!
A formal challenge has been issued from the York Area Pet Bird Club to other bird clubs throughout Pennsylvania to match our donation of $500.00 to The Alex Foundation to support Dr. Irene Pepperberg's work.
But, Kim, our press secretary didn't stop there. She is issuing the challenge to bird clubs across the United States as well. But, again, she won't stop there. She is contacting the bird magazines too since they have a bigger impact in the bird world in helping to get the word out. If other clubs match or surpass our donation, hopefully this money will help Dr. Pepperberg to continue the research that she started with Alex.
Maybe we can get this challenge going around the world with just the click of a mouse...
About The Alex Foundation and Dr. Irene M. Pepperberg's work
The goal of The Alex Foundation is to support research that will expand the base of knowledge establishing the cognitive and communicative abilities of parrots as intelligent beings.
These findings will be used to encourage the responsible ownership of parrots, conservation and preservation of parrots in the wild, and veterinary research into the psychological diseases and care of these birds. Through these efforts The Alex Foundation, the memory of Alex will live on, and will accomplish its mission to improve the lives of all parrots worldwide.
Evidence has been established which indicates that parrots are highly social and sentient beings, fully aware of their surroundings. Despite this, thousands of wild parrots are captured and taken from their flocks and natural habitat for the international pet trade every year. It is estimated that up to 50% of them die before they are even exported. Additionally, captive parrots may be abused or mistreated, often unintentionally, and many are abandoned by owners each year who do not understand the requirements of parrot stewardship. The mission of The Alex Foundation is to improve the lives of parrots in captivity and preserve those in the wild.
The Foundation helps provide funding for Dr. Irene Pepperberg's work with African Grey's - Griffin and Arthur (aka ''Wart''). Dr. Pepperberg has developed training techniques (the Model/Rival Technique) that enable Grey parrots not only to produce, but also comprehend and use English speech appropriately. She has also shown that these birds can perform as well as chimpanzees and dolphins on many tasks used to evaluate intelligent behavior. The hope is that demonstrating that parrots are sentient beings will encourage responsible pet ownership, conservation efforts and veterinary research into psittacine diseases.
Contributions to the Foundation are used to pay for veterinary bills, supplies for the birds and the research (food, vitamins, laboratory equipment), for assistance in training and testing the parrots and for supplies needed to document the research (e.g., video and audiotapes). No federal funding is possible because Dr. Pepperberg no longer has a full academic appointment. With support of the Foundation, research can proceed effectively and at the lowest possible cost.
Some of us have had the opportunity to hear Dr. Pepperburg speak a few times and she has shared with us that her past 30 years with Alex has been a very bumpy one. Just when she thought things were going well and she had some funding for a bit to "relax" and work on her goals the funding or her positions were pulled right from under her. We never thought that someone as prestigious as we consider Dr. Pepperburg to be would have had that much difficulty, after all she obtained her Ph.D. through Harvard University in 1976. We have to say that we feel that most people given the difficulties she faced during her 30 years with Alex probably would have just given up, but she persevered through all these ups and downs and has taught us all so much about the avian brain and proved scientifically just how intelligent parrots really are.
The use of this model rival technique resulted in Alex being able to label 50 objects, 7 colors and he could "count" up to 6 objects. He was learning the alphabet from refrigerator letters and was learning the phonetics for these letters. He had a vocabulary of 150 words and used phrases such as “I want X” and “Wanna go Y”, where X and Y were appropriate object and location labels. He acquired concepts of categories, bigger and smaller, same-different, and absence. Alex combined his labels to identify, request, refuse, and categorize more than 100 different items demonstrating a level and scope of cognitive abilities never expected in an avian species. Pepperberg says that Alex showed the emotional equivalent of a 2 year-old child and intellectual equivalent of a 5 year-old. Her research with Alex shattered the generally held notion that parrots are only capable of mindless vocal mimicry. Alex was also working on identifying objects from photographs. Alex understood a zero-like concept all on his own! Below is the incredible story.
Comprehension of Number Labels - The purpose of the study was to provide evidence that Alex could understand his number labels fully, rather than merely produce them. Alex, who had received no previous training on the task, was presented with various collections of objects on a tray. He was shown either three different sets of 1 to 6 of the same objects but of different colors (for example: 2 red blocks, 4 yellow blocks and 5 green blocks). Or he was shown three sets of different objects, each set being a different color and number (for example: 1 blue block, 5 yellow pompons and 3 orange keys). The blocks were scattered randomly on the tray, and Alex was asked the question, "What color X?" where X is a number from 1 to 6. Alex gave the correct answer in an impressive 58/66 trials--87.9% accuracy. The results showed that Alex understood what his number labels represent. It also shows that he did better at such tasks than children up to 3-years-old, who, for example, may point to each of a set of three objects and say, "1, 2, 3", but not fully understand that three objects are present.
A "Zero-Like" Concept - On one of the trials in the above experiment, Alex was presented with a set of two, three and six objects and asked "What color 3?" He answered "five." When questioned twice more, he replied "five" both times. The experimenter then asked, "OK, Alex, tell me, what color 5?" He immediately answered, "None." This was the correct answer, since there was no group of five objects on the tray. Alex had apparently used "none" to indicate the absence of a quantity, although he had never been taught to do so. He had previously used "none" to indicate that no category (color, shape, or material) was the same or different when he was asked about the similarity or difference between two objects. For example, when shown two identical objects and asked "What's same?" Alex would say "none". Alex then spontaneously transferred his response to the question "What color bigger?" When first shown two differently-colored objects of identical size and asked, "What color bigger?" he said, "What's same?" When queried again, he answered "None". Now he had used it to indicate an absence of a quantity.
In order to be sure that Alex's new use of "none" was not a fluke, the experimenters gave Alex the opportunity to respond "none" in future trials. On these "none" trials, Alex's accuracy was 5/6--83.3%. As Dr. Pepperberg had not trained Alex to use the term "zero", his use of "none" was impressive for several reasons. Since the use of zero by humans is more recent than the use of other numbers, the use of a zero-like concept by a parrot, whose walnut-sized brain is so small and so different from ours, is quite an accomplishment. Also, the idea of none , even though Alex had previously used it to indicate an absence of similarity or difference, is abstract and relies on the violation of the expectation that something will be present. Therefore, Alex's ability, without training, to transfer "none" to the domain of absence of quantity was unexpected. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Alex's use of "none" was impressive because it was his own idea to do so - he basically manipulated the experimenter so that they would ask him that specific question so that he could show off what he knew. We think this is just INCREDIBLE!
Once, when a research sponsor stopped by the lab to see Alex show off his "reading" skills, Alex seemed to show the visitor another type of behavior--condescension. "He asked for a nut--'Wanna nut'--after each successful answer," remembers Pepperberg, chuckling. "Each time we asked him to perform one more time. And each time he repeated, ‘Wanna nut.’ "Finally, he said, ‘Wanna NUT!’. And then he sounded out the word the same way we taught him: ‘Nnn-uhhh-TUH!’ as if to spell it out for us." The amazing thing here is that Alex was trained the phonetics for "N" and "T", but not for "U", he figured that out all on his own!
Dr. Pepperberg's work has helped ALL parrots everywhere and EVERYONE that owns and CARES about parrots. We thank Dr. Pepperberg for all that she and Alex have done.
If you or your club can, please donate to the Alex Foundation, as Dr. Pepperberg really needs the funding to continue her very valuable work.
Dedicated to teaching the care, sharing the knowledge, and telling of the love and joy of pet birds.
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York Area Pet Bird Club