Ep. 4 – Irene Pepperberg on revolutionizing what humans think of bird brains

Dr. Irene Pepperberg, pictured here with Griffin, an African Grey Parrot, at Harvard University. (Photo by Stephanie Mitchell.)

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.

“I had to always maintain a distance,” Dr. Pepperberg says. “I always had to treat Alex as a colleague [and] put aside any feelings I had, because they couldn’t color what I was doing… I kept that [distance] until he passed, and that’s when that barrier completely shattered.” Dr. Pepperberg is pictured here with Alex, Griffin and Arthur. (Photo courtesy of Brandeis University.)
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