Irene M. Pepperberg

Alex, if not Irene Pepperberg, is a household name. I vaguely remember in middle school watching the famous Alex videos and having all of my ideas about animal intelligence challenged. My dad eagerly tells of his experience meeting Irene Pepperberg (I'm sure I'll get an e-mail from him reminding me that he knows her personally after I publish this review), so they're both definitely household names in my life. Therefore, there is little attempt to familiarize the reader with the story of Alex or why he is important and the attempt that is made (a painfully long intro/eulogy) is unnecessary.

I was expecting the book to largely focus on the science of working with Alex and how Dr. Pepperberg formulated the work as she had and what she has concluded. Instead, Dr. Pepperberg makes the decision to really write a memoir, which turns out to be a fascinating look at how much being a scientist requires overcoming opposition and how favored one is by lucky coincidences. Most interesting, to me, at least, is Pepperberg's explorations of the setbacks she faces, especially as a female scientist, and the unconventional methods she turns to to get funding and faculty support. It is really very telling about the state of American science that as famous of a scientist as Pepperberg is, she still reverts to private funding and adjunct faculty positions.… (altro)

Irene Pepperberg had a PhD in chemistry, but found that she was more intrigued by the questions of intelligence in birds, which had been her pets from childhood.

She managed to wrangle some space in a behavioral research lab and soon acquired a newly hatched gray parrot, which, she chose completely at random to bolster her scientific results. She named the little chick Alex (Avian Learning Experiment) and began nurturing him to adulthood.

It was the 1970’s and people had discovered that chimpanzees could acquire human knowledge. But those same researchers believed that no lower form of life such as a bird - especially with brains like Alex's the size of a walnut - would be able to do more than mimic sounds.

Irene and Alex proved them wrong as Alex learned colors, shapes, concepts such as fewer, more and even zero as well as being able to request food and put words together in new ways.

The bird also had a highly mischievous side as he would sometimes stubbornly give wrong answers when he was tired of the researchers repeating questions. When younger birds became part of learning experiments, Alex would sometimes help the beginner with the right answers – and sometimes on purpose give the poor learner the wrong answer.

Altogether, Alex proved that gray parrots can acquire language equal to or even beyond what chimpanzees are capable of doing. I’ll never look at birds in quite the same way after reading this book.… (altro)