Alex, Remembered
Watch a video clip of Alex in 2006 with researcher Irene Pepperberg. (Requires Quick Time version 7 or higher.)
Ruminations
Hope Is a Thing with Feathers
Even to strangers, a prrot who counts, counts
By Laura Gardner
Like all great love affairs, this one involved heroism, seduction, loyalty, and more than a dollop of enigma, feathered with occasional yet charming petulance. But no pouting; that would be impossible with a beak.
When Alex the African Grey parrot died unexpectedly at age thirty-one on September 6, 2007, in his Brandeis lab, the world swooned as surely as he did. He had become an avian hero to many, earning iconic status and turning the phrase “bird brain” on its head.
For years, Alex had been the subject of steadily mounting popular interest as his trainer and lifelong confidante, comparative psychologist Irene Pepperberg, painstakingly built a case for research into avian cognition around his fascinating accomplishments. Media from all over the world regularly visited her Brandeis lab to see Alex strut his stuff. His identifications of colors, shapes, and numbers were often punctuated by this simple request: “want nut.” Naturally, like any celebrity, Alex was not above spoiling a session every now and then by sitting tight-beaked and slanty-eyed on his perch, the picture of amused self-satisfaction.
But most of the time he amazed and even inspired visitors. Perhaps his crowning achievement occurred last year, when he seemed to grasp a zero-like concept—an abstraction that takes children several years to fathom. His understanding of absence only made our hearts grow fonder. With his untimely death (African Greys can live to fifty), the public adoration of this bird brainiac fueled a media frenzy, prompted thousands of mournful e-mails, and led to countless Internet postings.
Almost certainly, Alex is the only bird (though not bird brain) to appear in Time magazine’s “Milestones,” People magazine’s “Passages,” and three substantive articles in the New York Times, including the front page of the “Sunday Week in Review.”
Yet despite thousands of stories about his life and death, the bird remains inscrutable. Was he just a mimic who squawked conditioned responses, as his detractors suggest? Or was he the finest example of how much smarter animals are than we give them credit for? Further research will undoubtedly give us more than just a bird’s-eye perspective on these questions.
For now, what seems inescapable about the popular response to his demise is this: Alex possessed qualities we most treasure in humans, but don’t encounter often enough these days. His loyalty, affection, smarts, and becoming modesty about his accomplishments were nothing if not seductive.
Who needs scientific proof of these qualities? You could see how much affection he had for Pepperberg by the way he clasped her, well, beak, in his—squeezing her nose just enough to get the message across. As for loyalty, Alex always perched by his trainer, clearly preferring her over others and certainly over strangers.
To listen to Alex talk was a treat, not only because he appeared to concentrate, often tilting his head thoughtfully to one side and getting a better look at the object before naming it, but because his voice had an unforgettable cadence. Pearl grey with a brilliant streak of red in his tail feathers, Alex was an understated, winged superstar. Had he known his death would generate a media tsunami and a global wave of emotion, he probably would have advised everyone to “Calm down!” before making a simple appeal: “Wanna go back!”
Laura Gardner is the university’s science editor.