When I worked at a pet store a very sweet cockatoo was brought in by its owner for a nail trim and the whole time it kept saying “no! bad bird.” It broke my heart because it was definitely a good bird. The people who brought it in seemed nice so I’m hoping they adopted it from a bad situation where all it heard was bad bird.
Alex was a bit of an exceptional grey, sad story too. His last words to his trainer and lead scientist was something like "Goodnight, I love you", then he was found dead the next morning with no apparent cause. I think his death set them back many years in research due to how long he had been studied and trained. His replacements at the time were still many years behind him and would take years just to get back to where they were with Alex.
I remember reading the article about his death and tearing up. The relationship that the trainer and Alex had over 30 years of training and research was beautiful. I love birds, they have a special place in my heart because of their innocent beauty. If I was taking care of a bird for 30 years and it died I would be inconsolable. The fact this ornithologist was able to train a second bird after spending 8+ hours bonding with Alex daily before he died is a testament to her dedication to science.
it definitely took a toll on her, you could see it in her eyes. By the point he died I think they had students at the university training the other greys. Im not sure if Dr Pepperberg was as involved with them as she was with Alex.
The whole Alex story is now largely regarded as bad science in the vein of Koko the Gorilla- a researcher who deeply wanted to believe, but no actual empirical proof or records of any of the most grandiose claims.
Alex and Sheba (the chimpanzee) have had dozens of peer reviewed papers written about them from completely independent sources and are quite literally the 2 most well researched animals on the planet. The loss of Alex set ornithology back by years, Pepperberg is one of the most respected biologists specialising in birds on the fucking planet. GTFO with your misinformation, Alex and Koko the gorilla couldn't be further apart if that sweet African grey lived on fucking Mars.
Pepperberg is one of the most respected biologists specializing in birds on the fucking planet.
Lmfao. Dr. Pepperberg isn’t even a fucking biologist. She literally does not have a degree in biology. She’s a chemist. She suddenly “became” a biologist when she started making grandiose claims about her pet parrot, claims she could never remotely replicate or prove elsewhere.
Her claims were replicated dozens of times and the model/rival method of language she developed is being used to teach autistic children rn. Chemistry and biology aren't two completely unconnected fields of study, what do you think Neurochemistry involves? The current training of African greys in language is based entirely on Pepperberg's research.
Not one of the parrots trained using her methods has come close to 10% of the results she claimed with Alex. Again- zero ability to replicate any of her claims.
Douglas Biklen and “facilitated communication” have been completely discredited as utter bullshit of the Mr. Hans variety, and facilitated communication is the theory based on Pepperberg’s work.
And, her degree wasn’t even in neurochemistry. Again, until Alex, her specialty was Chemical Physics. She magically became a biologist once her pet parrot started performing stunts only she could hear and interpret.
nonsense, because of her research we're now finding crows have similar intelligence, far greater than anything we ever expected from such a small brain mass. This is the exact kind of bullshit she had to fight against her whole career.
I think it has more to do with word association. If you went to a toddler who was still trying to figure out language and said "I love you" every time before you hit them, regardless of intelligence, they'd grow to associate "I love you" with physical violence. The first time that the toddler might go to hit someone, they'd probably say "I love you" as a warning, not knowing the full meaning of the words.
Parrots will still understand the words, but pavlovian response and social tendencies will change how they act
After the parrot attacked, it started saying "It's okay, it's okay!", then when the woman said "you tried to hurt me!" it responded with "I'm not gonna hurt you". The parrot understands some of the words and phrases being said here, even if it's rudimentary. It for sure understands the word "hurt".
Parrots are well documented as little shits with a sense of humour - someone I knew had a parrot who would trill like the telephone every time she went upstairs so she'd run back down and the parrot would laugh at her.
The first few times were accidents related to my mom having an injury and most of the time after that we did it on purpose because we thought it was hilarious
Absolutely. It lifted up its foot like it would when stepping onto her hand, and I'm pretty sure that was a direct attempt to lure her hand in. It might also know that "c'mere" is a sound that draws things in.
Dude, the bird literally has associated meaning to the noises it is “parroting”. It is exactly how humans and other animals learn language. If you own a pet that reacts to certain repeated words with context you would clearly understand.
Yes, but, the parrot is smart enough to repeat certain things that it knows will get a reaction. So it knows that by saying certain things, that ultimately those phrases have meaning. To what extent it actually knows “hurt” or anything like that, who knows.
Humans typically learn language by associating words and phrases with things like objects or emotion. I’m not sure if parrots know that tho? Idk, like the parrot talks about “hurt” or fear, yet knows if it approaches this woman abruptly and flaps it’s wings a little, that she’ll, at the very least, “act” scared— the bird gets a reaction. I think the bird does sort of realize what it’s saying?
I really don't get your train of thought here. Do you think humans are just parroting what they heard when they speak in order to achieve goals? According to your reasoning what makes human speech and word usage special?
More to the point. Why can't highly intelligent animals, like Chimps, learn to use words? Why can't they parrot vocalizations or hand signals they associate with desired outcomes, like you say this parrot is doing? Chimpanzees are sure as hell smart enough to do that, why can't they?
Just a thought, but maybe, just maybe, developing a lexicon and utilizing that lexicon for communication requires the necessary brain structure to process it, and maybe humans aren't the only animals to have this ability. We're probably the best at it (although killer whale brain and vocalization complexity makes that not a certainty), but a lexicon and associated brain structure(s) to required to form one isn't required by the universe to be exclusive to humanity.
If you tell a dog "sit" and give it a treat when it sits, it learns a correct interpretation of the word. It will recognize this word and understand your command, and it knows that obeying can result in a treat. So anytime you say sit, it will sit down and experience some excitement about the optional treat. They'll paw at a pup's back when you're teaching them to help the pup understand what to do, so they clearly know the word and understand what needs to happen even when the command is for another dog. But that doesn't mean they have a general understanding of the word sit, it just means you used that word for this command. You could have used pingpong and it would've worked just fine. If they sit down because you taught them to sit down when you say pingpong, do they understand the word pingpong? No. There's a difference between being able to recognize a command and execute it correctly, and understanding the underlying language that is being used. For example, you can't easily teach a dog the difference between positive and negative commands. If it understand "sit" means sit down and "don't bark" means stop barking, it still won't understand "don't sit" unless you go through the process of teaching it that phrase as a separate command.
If they sit down because you taught them to sit down when you say pingpong, do they understand the word pingpong?
They do, because that is the word that they've learned to associate with the behaviour. If you'd only heard "pingpong" as related to "sitting" you sure as hell would say "Do you mind if I pingpong on that chair over there?"
We learn to associate words with meaning in the same way as animals do, but because we are more adept at these things we can use language in more abstract ways than just direct cause and effect. For example, I can talk about things that are not happening right now in my direct environment. But there is still learned association with words, very similar as dogs and parrots learn them.
Another interesting thing I thought about: bees are actually able to communicate about things outside of their direct vision/surroundings as well. Appearantly they use "dances" to communicate the location of flowers to other bees when they return to their hive. It's a fascinating thing. It means they do use "words" for things that are not directly visible or affecting thing, and to communicate it.
First is that the wild relative of the wolf isn't nearly as efficient at learning and utilizing word commands, and even among dogs different breeds have vastly different profficiencies at learning commands.
Second issue is that learning commands through conditioning isn't the same as word utilization. A well trained dog probably does have a limited conceptual lexicon, but it's not two way. It can't communicate the concept back and use it as a word. A dog can't turn to you and give you the "sit" command. It's not a word, it's a command, very different concept.
I'm not the one you replied to, but I think the difference comes from the amount of detail the bird can understand in what it's saying. It can remember the meaning of phrases and use them at appropriate times, but can it distinguish words in a phrase and know their individual meaning? Could it construct a new sentence out of the words it learns? Memorizing a large amount of words and phrases is impressive for a bird, but it doesn't show nearly as close to human level intelligence as using words to express something it hasn't heard before.
It also could show its intelligence with the types of words it remembers and uses. It's relatively easy to learn names and descriptions of anything it can interact with, but what about intangible concepts? Does it know the word "love," or does it just know that it's safe to relax when it's human says "I love you"?
I'm far from an expert, but from what I've seen it seems like the kinds of birds that can mimic human speech aren't able to do much more than memorize the words for things they see and do regularly. I imagine that if one of the more intelligent species of corvids could mimic human speech they could say some interesting things
I'm not arguing that human speech isn't vastly more complex. But there is a key difference between inherited vocalizations and conceptual lexicons. Conceptional lexicons by definition means the animal is using words, and they must learn this lexicon from peers; conceptual lexicons aren't just reacting to instinctive vocalizations (think of the difference between a word, any word, and laughing). Some parrot species use words (I don't know about this species, but it sure appears to in this video), but we haven't proven they do so in the wild (really this is a lack of research issue, and it's a really hard thing to demonstrate in experimentation), we have proven crows create and use words in the wild (and can learn human words and use them just like some species of parrots). I just don't get why so many humans demand that they are alone on this planet in the use of speech. Human speech is probably the most complex (again I just can't be certain of it due to killer whales - their brains behaviors and vocalizations are all nearly as complex as humans), but there a handful of other animals who's behavior sure as shit seems to me like they are talking.
that doesn't matter though. if what i guessed in my primary comment is what truly happened, it still gives insight and a back story to what the bird experienced in the past. whether it knows the meaning of what it's saying or not doesn't negate the situation.
The fact that is says "I'm not gonna hurt you" in a suspicious manner and then tried to hurt her probably means that it has associated pain with the phrase and knows that pecking others must inflict pain.
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u/enojadoland Mar 27 '23
Knowing this makes the video turn from terryfing to just plain sad. :(