This is a very exciting moment when your beloved little parrot speaks his first word, especially if this is your name. But you are interested in when you hear a parrot reading poetry, does he understand what he is saying?
Maybe he just thoughtlessly imitates words? Or are parrots smarter and smarter than we think of them? According to studies by Irene Pepperberg, parrots are capable of more than just imitation.
Unlike other animals, the vocal apparatus of parrots allows them to easily imitate human speech. Parrots, according to Pepperberg, learn to communicate in a flock among themselves, imitating the cries of adult birds.
Interesting fact: parrots in the wild learn to communicate with each other, imitating the cries of adult birds.
Do parrots understand what they say?
Then it becomes clear the behavior of parrots, receiving a reward for repeating the words that are said by their owners. To say the truth does not mean to understand. To clarify the question of how well the parrot understands what it says, Pepperberg set her experience at Northwestern University. In 1977, for this purpose, she bought Alex at the pet store - a gray African parrot (these parrots speak better than others). At first, Alex was friendly, like his other gray relatives. Then it turned out that this is a very smart bird.
Experiments with a Parrot
Alex is sitting on the perch, and the experimenter shows him the key on the tray. “The key,” the parrot says, and Pepperberg gives him the key. Unlike a domestic parrot, Alex receives a reward only if he correctly names what he is shown. Having named the key correctly, he immediately receives it. “At the beginning,” says Pepperberg, “no one believed that a parrot could correctly name objects. But now Alex is able to correctly name 100 items: from a sheet of paper to a grain and cork. "
Learning to correctly name objects, Alex received a new task. Now he had to not only name the item, but give it a definition, for example, not just a key, but a blue key. Alex quickly learned to distinguish colors. If they showed him two keys - red and green, and asked: “What is the same here, and what is different?”, Then the parrot joyfully shouted back: “Color!” Alex can answer the same question: “Form” and “Material”. Pepperberg says that the parrot has certain difficulties with the word material, he pronounces it in abbreviated form: “Matter”.
Years of apprenticeship passed and Alex was tired of the experimenter's tricks. For example, he will call a key, and then, taking it in his beak, he will throw it on the floor. When he is often shown an item that he knows well, Alex may ask for something new. When, say, they show too many keys, he can be capricious and say: “I want a cork!” And they give it to him.
Interesting fact: Alex Parrot knows the names of 100 items.
A curious bird may demand: "No, you say what it is!" If on a tray they show her some new item.When Alex is asked about the color of an unfamiliar object, the bird can play a whole performance, trying to get hold of a new toy.
To make Alex feel happy while learning to name objects, Pepperberg and her employees had to buy up almost all the colored trinkets in the children's store. True, sometimes Alex has hard days when he is not in the mood.
On such days, sometimes he can constantly shout: “No,” like a capricious two-year-old child. When he wants to show who is the boss in the house, he loudly announces: “I'm leaving!” and breaks out of the hands of an unfortunate student who wants to test him.
Some people feel that Pepperberg’s experiments do not prove that parrots can make meaningful use of human language. “In the end,” they say, “Alex cannot talk about what he just saw until he receives a reward.” Pepperberg argues that although, of course, Alex does not use the language in the generally accepted sense of the word, he still uses words to express ideas.
She believes that quite complex mental processes can occur in the brain of a parrot. In the end, another story. Alex could call banana, cherries and grapes. Once he was shown an apple. Alex said: “I want bangrad!”, Combining banana and grapes in one word. He came up with a name for a strange yellow-green fruit.
