This funny excerpt from Temple Grandin’s book Animals in Translation is a good example, I think, of animals being smarter than humans realize.–April Moore

     “Not very long ago, Dr. Pepperberg began trying to teach Alex [an African gray parrot] and another gray parrot, Griffin, to sound out phonemes, which are the sounds that letters and letter combinations represent.  English has 40 phonemes altogether.  She and her colleagues wanted to see if the birds understood that words are made out of letters that could be recombined to make other words, so they started training the birds with magnetic refrigerator letters.

     “One day their corporate sponsors were visiting Dr. Pepperberg’s lab, and she and her staff wanted to show off what Alex and Griffin could do.  So they put a bunch of colored plastic refrigerator letters on a tray and started asking Alex questions.

     “”Alex, what sound is blue?”

     “Alex made the sound “Sssss.”  That was right;  the blue letter was ‘S.’

     “Dr. Pepperberg said, “Good birdie,” and Alex said, “Want a nut,” because he was supposed to get a nut whenever he gave the right answer.

     “But Dr. Pepperberg didn’t want him sitting there eating a nut during the limited time she had with their sponsors, so she told Alex to wait, and then asked, “What sound is green?”

     “The green example was the letter combination of ‘SH’ and Alex said, “Ssshh.”  He was right again.

     “Dr. Pepperberg said, “Good parrot,” and Alex said, “Want a nut.”

     “But Dr. Pepperberg said, “Alex, wait.  What sound is orange?”

     “Alex got that one right, too, and he still didn’t get his nut.  They just kept going on and on, making him sound out letters for his audience.  Alex was obviously getting more frustrated by the minute. 

     “Finally Alex lost his patience.

     “Here’s the way Dr. Pepperberg describes it:  Alex “gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, ‘Want a nut.  Nnn, uh, tuh.’”

     “Alex had spelled ‘nut.’  Dr. Pepperberg and her team were spending hours and hours training him on plastic refrigerator letters to see if Alex could eventually be taught that words are made out of sounds, and he already knew how to spell.  He was miles ahead of them.

     “Dr. Pepperberg says, “These kinds of things don’t happen in the lab on a daily basis, but when they do, they make you realize there’s a lot more going on inside these little walnut-sized brains than you might at first imagine.”  I would like to add that there is a lot more going on than humans perceive.  Dr. Pepperberg and her team are probably the world’s foremost authorities on parrot cognitive abilities, they’ve been working with Alex for 20 years, and yet they had no idea Alex had learned to spell.”

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Insights and Visions on the State of the Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.