Brainy parrots final words of Love ?
As children we used to read stories
of birds and animals talking . But this is not a story , it is a reality. This African gray parrot called Alex could speak more than 100 English words and not just that he understood
colours and shapes.
Professor Pepperberg had bought this parrot from a pet store .Using novel methods of teaching the professor promoted Alex to learn scores of words, count items in small numbers and to recognize colours and shapes.. Of course parrots rhyming one liners or mimicking a few words is not unknown,. But here was a different case. It was not just parroting as we call it but using words to express the feeling of anger or frustration and even boredom.. Well the professor used incentives like giving grapes and others eatables the bird liked to train him . In fact Alex was now learning to speak hard to pronounce and complicated words. The scientists feel Alex’s abilities to learn words and more than that understand colours and shapes has revolutionized the thinking about the birds brains. The night before the parrot died its last words were “you be Good , see you tomorrow, I love you . After all this cal we still use Birds brain as pejorative term ?