Irene Pepperberg (43:12)
So it's 1970s, and I'm getting my doctorate in theoretical chemistry from Harvard. And I'm watching NOVA programs on this groundbreaking work on training animals to communicate with humans, work on signing chimps and dolphin studies. And I decide, that's it. I've had this epiphany. I'm going to change my whole field and do this work and I'm going to do it with a parrot. And parrots talk. They live. For a long time, I thought this was the most incredible idea in the world, that I'd be part of this revolution. I finish the degree, I study up everything I can in the field, I write my grant proposal, I submit it, thinking, yes, no. The reviewers come back asking me what I'm smoking. The last time parrots and humans were connected, unlike apes, where we're connected pretty closely genetically, 280 million years ago. Big, big difference. Parrots, unlike dolphins, they have this little tiny brain the size of a shelled walnut. But dolphins have this big brain. It makes sense to work with them, not with a parrot. Plus, I'm working with an animal that's a pet, you know, I mean, how am I going to keep my scientific objectivity there? And plus, I'm not going to use the standard scientific techniques of the day, which means starve your animal to 80% of its normal body weight, stick it in a Skinner box and go from there. No, no, I'm going to just talk to the bird. Yeah, right. But I'm really determined. I go out and I buy a parrot. It's a gray parrot. That's the name of the species and the color. He's a gray, different shades of gray, bright red tail. He's about this big, weighs about a pound. I name him Alex for avian learning experiment. And so I start training him by giving him modeling system. He's learning a couple labels. And I put in the grant proposal. And this time I'm really lucky. I have somebody on the panel who studies bird song who recognizes the striking parallels between the development of vocal communication in birds and humans. So I get a grant for a year, and it was quite a roller coaster of a life. But at the beginning, we started this work, and In Alex's first 10 years, he learned about 50 labels for objects. He learned to label seven colors. He learned to label five shapes, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 cornered. He labeled different materials. He understood concepts. So I could show him the object. And I'd say, alex, you know, what's this? And he'd say, block. And I said, good birdie. And what color? Blue. And good boy. And what shape? Four corner. And what matter? Wood. And he combined these labels so he could identify 150 different things. This is a parrot brain size of shelled walnut. Could label about 150 different things. He learned concepts of bigger and smaller. So I could chomp two things and say, what's color bigger? What color is smaller? And he'd tell me he learned. And this was really extraordinary concept of same and different. So I could show him two things and not just tell me that they were same or different, but he could tell me what about them was same or different. So I'd say, what's same? And he'd tell me, color, shape, matter, or none, if nothing were same or different. And this was pretty exciting work. And again, Alex is about 10 years old, and I'm invited to the international primatological Congress. This is a big deal. International congress. I'm speaking in front of thousand people, and I'm the only person there who is not a primatologist. I am the one person who has been invited to talk on comparative behavior. And I'm talking about a bird again, brain size of shelled walnut. To all these people who are working with apes and orangutans and whatever. So I get up and I give my talk. And at the end of my talk, one of the silver. We call them the silverback males, one of the. One of the senior, you know, senior primatologists gets up and I'm going, okay, here it comes. You know, I'm just going to get totally creamed. And he, you know, he said, well, you know, very interesting little study you did there. But you mean to tell me that your bird did something much more complicated than pre max apes? And I want to say, yeah, and backwards and in heels, you know, to be honest, But I say, no. And I say, smile. I say, no, sir. You know, that's right, sir. He did. And I'm thinking, okay. And he says, oh. And he sits down, and I'm going, oh, I've done it. I've made it. You know, yay. But a couple of weeks earlier, I'd gotten this little letter from National Science foundation saying, you know what? It was a nice proposal, but we ran out of money, so no more funding. So I'm sitting there going, okay, how are we going to keep the lap going at this point? So we fast forward a little bit. And it was still very hard for me to get some recognition from colleagues. Even with these successes, there was always the question of scientific objectivity. And I dealt with it by treating Alex like a colleague, the way I would treat my students. You know, you work with them, you teach them as much as you can, you respect them, but you draw a line between the way you interact with them and the way you interact with your own children or the way you interact with your significant others to keep that scientific objectivity. But we're doing okay. And again, by this time, we're doing a lot of publicity. We're doing Scientific American Frontiers and discovery channel and 48 hours. And Alex is about 15, and we get an invitation to do radio from the BBC. And by this time, Alex's personality is really coming to a fore because he's learned not just to answer questions, but to label and to interact and ask me questions. And so now I'm thinking radio. You know, I could ask him anything. And I could say, yes, good boy. Because, you know, they can't see what's going on. So I think, all right, how am I going to do this? Okay. So I start the program and I say, okay, I'm holding an orange square piece of wood, and I'm going to ask Alex some questions. So you hear my heels click, click, click as I go into the room, and I go, alex, going to ask you some questions. Going to do some work. And I go, alex, what color? Little birdie voice. No, you tell me what shape. Okay, Alex, it's four corner. Now, can you tell me what color? Tell me what matter. Okay, Alex, it's wood. Can you tell me what color? No. How many? Alex, there's one toy here. And, you know, part of me again is going, oh, this is so cool. He's not just acting like a little robot. I mean, he's interacting with me. He's talking with me. The other part of me is going, but they really. I really want to hear him answer some questions. So I'm going, alex, come on, what color? And he goes, no, tell me what shape. And I go, okay, Alex, time out. You're misbehaving. And you hear my heels as I start to walk out the door, giving him a timeout. And then comes the little birdie voice. I'm sorry, come here, Orange. So obviously I treated Alex like a colleague, but he. He didn't necessarily treat me like a colleague. We got a gig at the Media Lab at mit big time. I'm hired for a temporary position that could be extended to use the bird as a model for intelligent learning systems. But once I'm there and I start looking at all the gizmos and whatever they have, I start developing for the sponsors animal human communication systems to enrich the birds lives all these animals. Interpet Explorer web browsers for parrots, things like that. And those of you who know the Media Lab know that the sponsors come who've given us all this money to do these things, come twice a year to see what we've done with their money. Well, word had gotten out that there was a live bird and they wanted to see Alex. And they come through in waves, five to seven minutes. What we were doing was showing him refrigerator letters, the things you show your kids, to have him sound out the letters in the hope that somewhere down the road he'd be able to, like, we could put the letters together and he could maybe sound out a label to see if he understood what these sounds meant. Okay, so. But he's at this very early stage, and the task, at this point, we put all the letters on a tray. They're different colors. And we ask Alex what color is, you know, and he goes, blue. Good birdie. What a nut. Okay, Alex, you can't have a nut. We've only got these people for five minutes. You know, let's do another thing. Okay, you know what sound is green? SH S H. Good birdie. What a nut. Wait, wait. So we do this several times, and each time he's getting more and more upset because he's not getting his reward. And finally, after about four or five times, he looks at me and goes, wah. Nut. N. Uh, T. And in typical Alex, he's telling me, stupid. Do I have to spell it for you? But the other part of it is, you know, I'm thinking he's gone light years ahead of us because N and T were on the tray, but was not. So he had figured out himself how to split the words apart into the sounds. And use them. So, again, after all of these high points, you know, the media lab gig falls apart. I'm actually on unemployment for a while. I get a Radcliffe fellowship to help things through. But to keep the lab going, I'm going to bird clubs every other weekend, literally, to raise money. I have to raise $100,000 a year to keep the lab going. And it's getting more and more crazy and we're trying to figure out what's going on. And my colleagues at Harvard have this great idea that Alex has been so interactive and fun, maybe we should start looking at how he sees the world. Literally. Can he do optical illusions? So we put together a grant, and of course it's rejected the first time. We fix it up, we resubmit it, and it's September 2000, 2001. A little bit later that week, I'm sitting at my desk eating breakfast, which I do. Emails are coming in from Europe and Japan, and one comes in from Europe. Italk has been funded.
