Latest article on Dr. Pepperberg and Griffin

[danmcq]

I hope you enjoy the write up and video:

 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/12/polly-want-a-vocabulary/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12.05.daily%2520%281%29By

[Inara]

Thanks for posting! Love keeping up with Dr. Pepperberg and Griffin.

[judygram]

Thanks Dan for sharing this with us.

[birdhouse]

Don't know if it will ever get mentioned, but it might be interesting to find out how old Athena is when she starts to speak human. Wondering if there will be any difference than w/our members' fids.

[Luvparrots]

Oh yes, Griffin looks so interested and healthy. Good job Pepperberg.

[Mistyparrot]

I see Dr Pepperberg is still clipping wings. I wish she wouldn't. She understands that her Greys are intelligent sentient beings separated from us by 280 million years of evolution. Possibly the most important thing that birds including Grey parrots evolved were wings and the ability fly and truly live in three dimensions. I believe her Greys would be much happier and healthier and Irene could learn so much more from them if they could be birds sometimes.

 

Steve N Misty

Edited December 16, 2013 by Mistyparrot

[Brat Birds]

Thank you. Would you say that Griffin plucks?? His chest is quite white with down feathers.

[Parrot Lady]

nice video and yep Griffin does pluck , I can tell since I have Smokey a plucker bird

[chezron]

It concerns me that all of the birds I have seen Irene working with-- pluck, and are clipped.

[danmcq]

I suspect in such a grueling environment, a grey would have high stress and frustration. The price is high many times for the progress of scientific research. The plucking is obviously caused by it.

[kins2321@yahoo.com]

I watched the video twice. I don't agree bird is a plucker. I am going to email Irene and ask. Just because a bird is clipped... does not make them a plucker. I see both sides of the coin. I " trimmed", when they needed to focus on training, as well as practiced flying with my gang, as they matured. All of my birds can fly quite well. They alternate walking and flying.I still truly believe, birds pluck when stressed. They seem to me to be stressed when they are on " lock down!" Cages are closed.Birds need their own room. My gang have always had their own room to explore. Noone has a feather issue as well as they all get along. Nancy

[Muse]

Don't know if it will ever get mentioned, but it might be interesting to find out how old Athena is when she starts to speak human. Wondering if there will be any difference than w/our members' fids.

 

I strongly suspect birds are just like any other creature. Every one of them learns and develops at their own pace, partly influenced by genetics/native intelligence and partly by the surroundings. Megan talked at three months and now has a huge vocabulary and Mar barely utters a word. He did tell me, firmly and very plainly "NO!" when I was putting his harness on the other day. He put the diaper on, no problem. So I calmly told him that he could not go outside unless he put the harness on as well, held him and cuddled for a minute, and he changed his mind and slipped into the harness with no further argument. I guess he only talks when he has something to say. After raising nine, I have decided they all have their own strengths and weaknesses and all learned to talk at completely different times, despite having the same parents and mostly the same interactions.

[Muse]

I watched the video twice. I don't agree bird is a plucker. I am going to email Irene and ask. Just because a bird is clipped... does not make them a plucker. I see both sides of the coin. I " trimmed", when they needed to focus on training, as well as practiced flying with my gang, as they matured. All of my birds can fly quite well. They alternate walking and flying.I still truly believe, birds pluck when stressed. They seem to me to be stressed when they are on " lock down!" Cages are closed.Birds need their own room. My gang have always had their own room to explore. Noone has a feather issue as well as they all get along. Nancy

 

Let me know if you hear back from Dr. Pepperberg on the plucking. There were times Alex looked kind of ragged, but I wondered if that were moulting. Other times he appeared perfectly feathered.

 

Ours were clipped for the first year, until they moulted. I made the decision not to clip after they got flights and my husband supported it. I have been discussing with an acquaintance that owns a bird supply store if he knew of any studies on flighted birds and plucking. I know flighted birds are more confident and seem more calm because they know they can get away from things that bother or frighten them. I wonder if that could possibly mean they are less likely to be bored, stressed or frustrated. I know if someone took my ability to get around, I'd probably want to pull my hair out. I just haven't been able to find any decent study targeting flighted birds and plucking (or hopefully the lack there of).

[Muse]

I hope you enjoy the write up and video:

 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/12/polly-want-a-vocabulary/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12.05.daily%2520%281%29By

 

I enjoyed the video. I do have to wonder why Dr. Pepperberg clarifies the birds' communication by saying "It's not language." I would have to say I do not believe that. Megan has shown understanding of tenses and even inflection. She changes questions "Want some WATER?" to statements "want some water" and "FLY, little birdie!" to "Fly little BIRDIE?" Is not using complex sentence structures, verb tenses and inflection using language? She is speaking our language as plainly as I might expect a child from another country to do. And yet she maintains her own language, along with mimicry of both flockmates and other birds she hears from outside our home. Does she know what she is saying? Of course she does. Although she babbles to herself when settling in, she still uses her requests and commands to get what she feels she wants, needs and deserves. The other night, she was ready for bed. She stated "Ready to go bed-bye?" When I said no, she changed the inflection from a polite request to a statement "Ready to go bed-bye" (as in "I am, and you should be too!"). When Alex looked at Dr. Pepperberg and stated "I want to go back" he was talking to her just as a student would. He was tired of the lesson and wanted to go back to his cage. That, to me is using language - "the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other" (Merriam-Webster definition).

[Michellec]

Thank you for sharing this update. I loved the difference between Griffin and the baby grey.

[danmcq]

Nancy - You can clearly see Griffin is plucking in that video. It has nothing to do with him being clipped. There are a lot of clipped birds that do not pluck. I am rather uncertain of what you are trying to say.

 

Muse - I agree with you on language. Our greys learn the human language and use it correctly and even experiment with phrases and make up their own unique comments at times that are hilarious. An example of this is Dayo when he does not want to talk on the phone. He will answer it and say "Talk to the Meatloaf". Which clearly indicates he is advising the person to talk to an inanimate object because he is not listening. Much like we use the expression to "talk to the hand". They certain have "Language", both their own and human in my opinion.

[kins2321@yahoo.com]

danmcq... I disagree! Watched the video for a third time. Payed close attention.... NOT seeing it! I see lots of down, no feathers close to body for " threatening position". We have a difference of opinion! Thats okay. Nancy

[Muse]

danmcq... I disagree! Watched the video for a third time. Payed close attention.... NOT seeing it! I see lots of down, no feathers close to body for " threatening position". We have a difference of opinion! Thats okay. Nancy

 

I follow both "Life with Alex" and "The Alex Foundation" on Facebook. Arlene posted video yesterday of Wart and Alex who evidently would spend holidays at her house. Both birds looked very well feathered. I suspect some of the rattiness we are seeing in old pictures and videos may be more related to moulting than plucking. I know Little Budgie is moulting now and I keep finding bunches of feathers on the floor of his cage. I am sure if someone saw him right now they'd think I was a horrible mother to have such an awful looking bird! He's starting to look better than he did a week or so ago but he still looks pretty ragged. Maks and Alex (my Alex aka Alejandro) are both finishing their moult. Alex still has some patches that are mostly pin feathers on his head. Maks looks better but that is because Alex preens him, I think. Maks does not seem willing to reciprocate. All I can offer Alex is lots of "sprays" which he loves, and wait for his pretty fluffiness to grow back.

[Luvparrots]

I have read that Alex was a plucker. A written fact.

[danmcq]

Alex was plucking on and off through out his life. This is a known, documented and video taped fact. Here is just one video of many over the years that clearly shows this:

 

In regards Griffin. He is obviously showing signs of plucking in that video. Normal or even heavy molts make a grey look like griffin in that video. If anyones bbird starts looking ratty in the chest area like griffin, they are starting to pluck and attention is needed to resolve it. Plucking is not always bald spots with raw or bloody areas showing. If you do see such severe plucking it is called Severe or Acute plucking.

 

I won't beleaguer this topic any longer. My comment on Alex and Griffin plucking....

[Lupine]

I'm with Dan on this. I've seen many pictures of Alex where he clearly looks like he'd been plucking--a lot. In "Alex and Me", Irene does write about the stresses on Alex when she was forced to take jobs in different states than where he was kept, or when the lab was moved, etc.

 

Taking into account the pressures her birds endure for statistical data (repetition, etc) I'm sure they're stressed. She even hinted in her book that if they didn't have to repeat so many lessons for verifiable results, her birds would probably have a greater vocabulary. They'd likely be less frustrated as well.

[Mistyparrot]

When I adopted misty nearly ten years ago I taught him the names of many different fruits. One day he decided that "Orange" worked just as well for all fruits. I realised that my teaching him all the different names by naming showing and withholding until he got the name right was unfair on him. It was teasing and he got fed up with it. So I stopped trying to teach him in that way. He has picked up words and names in context just fine just as long as it meant something to him in some way. He has repurposed some but we both know what he means and that is all we need. I no longer risked stressing him trying to teach him to be a little human child and just let him be a parrot adult and he blows my mind every day with is smarts and beauty. Although he had poor feathers when I got him he looked a little ragged. He went through some heavy moults for the first three years and his flights came back so he picked up flying very well. We are now very close and his feather condition is great. He feels strong and firm.

Our parrots are not objects of study or subjects of experiment. They are companions and friends. They try to fit in to a world that they were not evolved to exist in. Thanks to their intelligence they will work it out just fine just as long as they get love and acceptance. I am always amazed when I realise that out last common ancestor was living around three hundred million years ago and yet we can grow to be friends and understand so much of each other. I am Grateful to Dr Pepperberg for the work she has done and the sacrifices she made. It was largely because of her work with Alex that academia came to realise that birds and parrots in particular were far more than automatons living just by instinct. That in fact they were intelligent sentient beings capable of a deep understanding of their world and able to communicate with humans in a meaningful way. It wasn't the way that Alex was able to name and classify that was the surprise. It was the way he would say when he had had enough and wanted to stop. It was the way that he showed that he realised that Irene's experiments were just games to him. That he was playing along but that he already considered himself the the master of the game.

I am grateful to Alex for the sacrifice he made although he probably never understood what he was missing. just that he was missing something. I don't think us parronts should attempt to emulate Irene. She was obliged to show results to justify her position and I think that Alex suffered a little because of that. Clearly he and his Grey fellows were and are very loved. But they are not pets or companions in the way our Greys and other birds are.

 

Steve n Misty