Listening to Alex

Everyone knows that parrots can imitate the sounds of human speech, but can they understand what words mean? A couple of decades ago, Irene Pepperberg decided to find out, with the help of Alex, a one-year-old African grey parrot. Alex is now 23, and in a new book, The Alex Studies, Pepperberg claims he doesn’t just “parrot” human speech but intentionally uses words to get what he wants. Indeed, some of his cognitive skills are on a par with those of a five-year-old child, says this University of Arizona researcher. Hard-nosed behaviourists see nothing in Alex’s performance beyond rote…