Categorical Aperitif

If I can, I'll be back later with some random Flickr blogging, but for now, I thought I'd mention something I just saw at the Times. Y'know, I got little sleep last night, and I woke up this morning with a pounding headache, and it's the sixth anniversary of The Day Everything Changed®, and I remember fearing at the time, as did lots of other people, that our country was going to start getting crazier and nastier, and we were right, and today we're still bogged down in the fifth year of a war that should not have been started in the first place, and our leaders and our media are blathering about surges and give it 'til March and six more months and how can we drag this out so that our army is wrecked and our coffers are emptied and the next administration gets hamstrung by it, and thousands upon thousands more people have been killed than died six years ago this morning, and so I was very grateful to run across this story, which, sad though it is, made me forget about all this crap just for a moment and remember instead that, despite all we do to turn it into a smoking ruin, the universe is still a pretty marvelous freaking place:

He knew his colors and shapes, he learned more than 100 English words, and with his own brand of one-liners he established himself in TV shows, scientific reports, and news articles as perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird.

But last week Alex, an African Grey parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of its life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.

[...]

When, in 1977, Dr. Pepperberg, then a doctoral student in chemistry at Harvard, bought Alex from a pet store, scientists had little expectation that any bird could learn to communicate with humans. Most of the research had been done in pigeons, and was not promising.

But by using novel methods of teaching, Dr. Pepperberg prompted Alex to learn about 150 words, which he could put into categories, and to count small numbers, as well as colors and shapes. “The work revolutionized the way we think of bird brains,” said Diana Reiss, a psychologist at Hunter College who works with dolphins and elephants. “That used to be a pejorative, but now we look at those brains — at least Alex’s — with some awe.”

[...]

Dr. Pepperberg used an innovative approach to teach Alex. African Greys are social birds, and pick up some group dynamics very quickly. In experiments, Dr. Pepperberg would employ one trainer to, in effect, compete with Alex for a small reward, like a grape. Alex learned to ask for the grape by observing what the trainer was doing to get it; the researchers then worked with the bird to help shape the pronunciation of the words.

Alex showed surprising facility. For example, when shown a blue paper triangle, he could tell an experimenter what color the paper was, what shape it was, and — after touching it — what it was made of. He demonstrated off some of his skills on nature shows, including programs on the BBC and PBS. He famously shared scenes with the actor Alan Alda on the PBS series, “Look Who’s Talking.”

Like parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like “calm down,” and “good morning.” He could express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills appeared to be about as competent as those in trained primates. His accomplishments have also inspired further work with African Grey parrots; two others, named Griffin and Arthur, are a part of Dr. Pepperberg’s continuing research program.

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, Dr. Pepperberg said, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

He was found dead in his cage the next morning, and was determined to have died late Thursday night.

There's a moment in Errol Morris's Fast, Cheap and Out of Control—one of my favorite films—where Ray the naked-mole-rat expert talks about how one of the coolest things in human-animal contact is the moment where Subject seems to recognize Subject across the species divide, where human and animal exchange looks that acknowledge each other's consciousness: "You know I am. I know you are." When I read about Alex's last words, I thought of Ray and his generous awe of that moment and all that it signifies.

There are mornings when you need to be reminded of things like this.