The Surprising Story of the Genius Parrot – Webtekno

Alex is very different from parrots who can only learn a few words and have no other skills. His abilities are comparable to those of a small child And he lives up to his IQ.

Well, Alex, the parrot who made a name for himself with his intelligence and skills, What skills does he have?

Irene Pepperberg bought Alex, whose name is an acronym for Avian Learning Experiment, from a random pet store.

This African gray parrot, learned more than 100 English words with the owner’s training and Pepperberg; He wrote dozens of scientific articles describing Alex’s verbal, mathematical and cognitive abilities. Alex and his owner managed to appear on a variety of television programs and in the popular press.

As a result of various studies Alex has an intelligence equivalent to that of a 5-year-old child. However, it was determined that he behaved emotionally like a 2-year-old child.

According to an analysis made when Alex was 23 years old; He could count up to 6, distinguish more than 50 objects and 7 different colors.

Also this smart parrot; Knows the meaning of words such as “same, different, larger, smaller, above and below”He was able to show emotions of anger and surprise during various tests and successfully complete a language test called Piaget.

For example, Alex says that a key shown to him describes it accurately, whatever its shape and color and could describe how the key shown differed from the others.

Pretty interesting, isn’t it? There’s more!

When Alex looked at herself in the mirror for the first time, she asked, “What color?” He asked the question and upon this question the owner asked Alex He repeated the word “gray” 6 times. Thus, the genius parrot easily learned that it was gray in color.

Additionally, Alex had an incredible ability to use language. For example, when he encounters an apple, the name of which he did not know before, He described it as “banerry”. The owner did not understand what Alex meant at first, but later this parrot, which had learned banana and cherry, started to use the expression “banerry”. He realized that he created this word in his own way, based on the words banana (Eng: “banana”) and cherry (Eng: “cherry”).

For a parrot, Alex was also very good at mathematics.

This parrot can collect at a basic level, although it is not very detailed. He could count how many objects were on a tray shown to him and tell the total.. He could also subtract two numbers from each other and knew that 6-6= equals 0.

But there was a very interesting situation that from time to time, Alex got bored of these commands and “I want to go back!” was to say. When he was asked questions over and over, he sometimes had difficulty and took his breath away in his cage. Accordingly, the owner tried to apologize to Alex in order not to offend him.

It was not easy to fool Alex the parrot.

For example, the owner, Alex, once said, “I want a banana.” When he said he gave him a peanut and Alex said, looking at the peanut again, “I want a banana.” said. If the owner did not fulfill his parrot’s request, he would throw the peanut around.

Also, when this parrot gets angry or frustrated, He knowingly gave wrong answers to all the questions asked of him. (At least the owner is pretty sure of that).

Considering that the average lifespan of gray parrots is 45 years, Alex’s death at the age of 31 was met quite early.

Alex, whose test results came back normal, surprisingly passed away on September 6, 2007. It was estimated that he died due to arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). And the words he said to his owner before he died were quite impressive: “Take care of yourself, I love you.”