EXPLORING NATURE: BIRD BRAIN

It is considered an insult to call someone a “birdbrain.” In truth, it is probably a compliment.

After all, birds display outstanding capabilities in flying complicated migratory routes and have the ability to shut down a portion of their brain while the remainder functions as usual, a great skill when flying for hours a night without stopping.

Dolphins and great apes also show signs of intelligence, but in the avian world, the parrot is perhaps tops in IQ.

And of all the parrots, one named Alex may have been the smartest.

This lively bird was purchased by Irene Pepperberg in a pet shop when it was a year old. Irene was an animal psychologist at Brandeis University and she conducted all sorts of learning experiments with her pet parrot.

He was named Alex as an acronym for Avian Learning EXperiment and he could answer questions made for six-year-old humans. He could also identify 50 different objects, recognize quantities up to six and distinguish seven colors and five shapes. Finally, he could understand concepts such as “bigger,” smaller,” “same” and “different.”

Alex had a vocabulary of over 100 words and was the first and only nonhuman animal to ask a question. That question was “Gray?” when looking at himself in a mirror.

He could understand the concept of zero and none.

Finally, he died on Sept. 6, 2007, at age 31.

His last words were: “You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow.”