Remembering Alex

When I returned from a quick run to the library earlier this evening, Demetrius told me the news that Alex the African Grey Parrot had died. I was stunned by the news, and the fact that he died suddenly, without having shown any signs of illness, brought back memories of our own African Grey's sudden death. So I suppose that's part of why this has hit me rather hard, but there's more to it than that. On the web site of The Alex Foundation, there is a tribute by Elaine Hutchison (PDF) that touches on some of what I'm thinking and feeling...

I never met Alex, but the world is a different place for me now that he is gone. Life seems duller, flatter…and less open to possibilities. But thinking about limited possibilities negates all that he accomplished in his life, and all that he will mean to future generations of parrots, people and animals in general.

Alex taught us many, many things about how the avian brain works. In doing so, he helped define the bonds between human animals and the rest of creation, illuminating a commonality that was unimagined before he showed us his truth. Alex opened the door into his mind—a mind that was so similar to ours that it seemed like coming home, and yet so different that it opened a thousand different doors to the universe.

He was both magical and miraculous. In his home, Alex filled the air with his watch-me-see-mehear-me personality. Alternately cajoling his parrot partners in their learning, and shouting out orders that sent lab assistants scurrying about his room, the atmosphere Alex created was charming and challenging and undeniable. His stupendous presence was a magical experience for those lucky enough to have known him.

For those of us who never knew him, we still felt the miraculous wonder of his being. Alex reached across what we thought was an impenetrable barrier---the barrier between human consciousness and avian consciousness. He reached out to us and let us know him. That is the miracle that was Alex.

His going will leave a huge empty space in the world of science. What he might have accomplished is dismaying in its semantics—the eternal unknowing of what might have been. But we can be grateful for what he was and what he gave to us.

This evening I discovered an article about Alex, based on an interview The Edge did with Dr. Irene Pepperberg. The ending of the piece made me smile, so I thought I'd share that tonight as well.

There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, "just blow us away." We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different ways to make up new words; that is, to demonstrate evidence for segmentation. He babbles at dusk, producing strings like "green, cheen, bean, keen", so we have some evidence for this behavior, but we need more solid data.

Thus we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."

Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers, "Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!" "Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."

Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing. These kinds of things don't happen in the lab on a daily basis, but when they do, they make you realize there's a lot more going on inside these little walnut-sized brains than you might at first imagine.

I hope Alex is somewhere cool. Eating lots of nuts. :)

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