In 1977, after finishing her doctorate in theoretical chemistry at Harvard, our guest Dr. Irene Pepperberg purchased a 1-year-old African Grey Parrot at a pet shop and named him Alex, an acronym for “Avian Language Experiment.” At the time, birds were not considered smart — but Dr. Pepperberg believed otherwise. For the next thirty years, she and Alex forged a deep bond as each other’s closest companions, and revolutionized how scientists and the public understand what it means to be “bird-brained.” Grey parrots may have walnut-sized brains, but Alex and Dr. Pepperberg showed that those brains have many capabilities long thought to be unique to primates — including the ability to speak and understand a human tongue . This feat is all the more remarkable considering that Alex’s and Dr. Pepperberg’s last common ancestor was a dinosaur that lived over 300 million years ago.
With the extraordinary force of vision, perseverance and bravery of Dr. Pepperberg, Alex learned to comprehend numbers and to do basic arithmetic; to identify colors, sizes, and shapes; to understand analogies and concepts such as “same,” “different” and “zero”; and to know over 150 English words, which he used to help train and sometimes chastise other birds in the lab telling them “you’re wrong!” and “speak clearly!” Alex even coined several words of his own, combining words he already knew when presented with a unique object, such as “banerry” for an apple after knowing the words for “cherry” and “banana” and “yummy bread” for “birthday cake” after being given one for the first time. And he did it all with unforgettable charisma and, often hilarious, personality until he passed away prematurely in 2007 at age 31, with the status of an international celebrity. As the ethologist Frans De Waal wrote, “Together with his tutor, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, Alex systematically destroyed the notion — the way he destroyed so many things — that all birds can do is mimic human language… Our notion of what a bird is has forever been changed.”
Today Dr. Pepperberg, whom NOVA called a “rebel scientist,” continues her work studying how birds think and communicate at Harvard with two African Grey Parrots, Griffin and Athena. She also leads The Alex Foundation, which aims to improve the lives of parrots worldwide by supporting research, encouraging responsible ownership, and advocating for their conservation in the wild. She is the author of The New York Times best-selling book Alex and Me, which is a loving remembrance of her time with Alex; The Alex Studies, which describes over 20 years of peer-reviewed experiments on Grey parrots; and the co-author of Animal Cognition in Nature, as well as many scientific papers.
Recommended books:
King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz
The Question of Animal Awareness by Donald Griffin
The Story of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
Alex compares “same” and “different” shapes and colors. After answering correctly, he often announced “want a nut!” (Photo by Irene Pepperberg.) 
With Athena, Dr. Irene Pepperberg’s youngest parrot, there is never a dull moment. Dr. Pepperberg hopes that Griffin will serve as a model for Athena as she learns more English words. (Photo by Irene Pepperberg.) 
When Griffin looks at the famous Kanizsa illusion, pictured here, he can identify the occluded triangle, suggesting that birds may solve visual optical illusions similarly to humans. (Photo by Irene Pepperberg.)
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