Exercises

Brainy bird

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Post

When Alex the African grey parrot died in 2007, many international newspapers ran stories reviewing his life’s achievements. Alex’s owner recently released a book about her work with this amazing bird. Read the story from the Bangkok Post to learn more about Alex.

Alex & Me is the title of the charming new book by Irene Pepperberg, Alex’s owner and colleague. In the book, Pepperberg describes how Alex helped change the way scientists view the ability of birds to think and communicate.

Pepperberg, a research professor at Brandeis and a teacher of animal cognition at Harvard, bought Alex from a Chicago pet shop in 1977. Pepperberg had to fight for recognition from the scientific establishment during her 30 years of work with Alex.

MORE THAN WORDS

Through years of careful work, Pepperberg showed that her parrot was not just repeating things that he’d heard from his trainer. Pepperberg says that Alex had the intellectual development of a human 5-year-old and the emotional development of a 2-year-old. He could do basic math and identify objects by their colour, size and material.

Pepperberg writes that when Alex was sick of working, he would ignore his trainers, preen his feathers or say, “Wanna go back,” meaning that he wanted to return to his cage. When Alex knocked over a coffee mug or gave a wrong answer, he would say, “I’m sorry.”

BRATTY BIRD

Alex’s personality was mischievous, confident and bossy. He was easily bored with the repetitious trials Pepperberg and her students created for him. He could also be condescending with the other birds in the lab, correcting them by saying, “you’re wrong” or “say better.”

Alex died last year of a fatal heart attack. His last words to Pepperberg were, “You be good, I love you.”

Exercises

Read the story. Then, answer the following reading comprehension questions.

1. What did Alex identify objects by?

2. What would Alex do if he was sick of working?

3. How did Alex die?

4. Where did Pepperberg buy Alex?

5.What was Pepperberg able to show with Alex?

	charming (adj): very pleasant or attractive cognition (n): the process by which knowledge and understanding is developed in the mind recognition (n): public praise and reward for somebody’s work or actions preen (v): to clean itself or make its feathers smooth with its beak mischievous (adj): enjoying playing tricks and annoying people bossy (adj): always telling people what to do repetitious (adj): involving something that is often repeated condescending (adj): behaving as though you are more important and more intelligent than other people