Pepperberg Sees Green Thanks to Grey Parrot “Alex”

Move over Marley, looks like you’ve been dogged by a parrot. While John Grogan’s “Marley & Me” may have been the cannon’s former standard, Irene Pepperberg’s recently published book “Alex & Me” has taken the ode to animal affection to a new level.

Pepperberg, a professor of psychology at Brandeis and part-time lecturer at Harvard, recounts the story of her relationship with Alex, a grey parrot that was the subject of her research for the past 30 years. Although he was kept in a cage and had an acronym name for “Avian Learning Experiment,” Alex was hardly your typical lab rat.

Soaring far beyond “Polly want a cracker,” Alex cracked open an expansive body of knowledge about avian intelligence. After being randomly selected at a Chicago pet store, Alex revolutionized what we know about parrots’ cognitive capacities: he was able to identify 50 different objects, seven colors, five shapes, quantities up to six, and concepts of category, among other things.

“He redefined the term birdbrain.” Pepperberg says. “When I began this work in the 70’s, people didn’t expect birds to do any complex cognitive tasks.”

Following Alex’s death last September, rather than flying off the handle, Pepperberg swooped in with an idea for a book. While she had published “The Alex Studies,” an academic exploration of the cognitive capacities of grey parrots in 2002, “Alex & Me” sought to approach Alex’s life from a different angle.

“People who knew me and knew the work only knew the science part and didn’t know what I call the back story, the story of the rollercoaster ride that I had on the way to doing all this research,” Pepperberg says. “After he died, the outpouring from people telling me how he had affected their lives—it was simply something I had never expected.”

Even after his death, looks like this caged bird is still singing.