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[AJE]

Alex is no ordinary bird brain


Meet Alex!

Alex has made it as far as a parrot can go in academia by proving himself to be exceptionally smart, or at least better educated than just about any bird on the planet. Irene Pepperberg, an adjunct professor of psychology at Brandeis, has been training Alex for 27 years, using a unique method she calls the model/rival technique. Alex watches interactions between his trainer and another parrot or a human being, learns to answer questions correctly, and competes to show he knows the right answer - it's something like being a contestant on a parrot version of Jeopardy! The technique works, dazzlingly. In the 1980s, Alex made headlines for being able to identify objects by shape, name, and color with an 80 percent or better accuracy rate.

Since then, Pepperberg has taught Alex the rudiments of spelling, addition, and subtraction. She will publish a paper this year in which she argues that Alex can understand a simple form of the concept of zero. Because of his sophisticated ability to communicate, Alex gives us a new window into the mind of a bird.