Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process,   ISBN:9780061672477

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Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process
Review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

If you are looking for a short (226 pages of text) enjoyable and yet informative read, this is a great little book. From the inside of the back cover it notes that "Irene M. Pepperberg is an associate research professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts and teaches animal cognition at Harvard University." This is the story of Dr. Pepperberg and her African gray parrot. It isn't just about the parrot or their relationship, it is, too, about Pepperberg's life. As a former university professor, I easily empathized with her efforts in finding a job and securing tenure. Her valiant efforts to find funding, publish papers, and obtain academic respect, credibility, and support are not uncommon. For some, this may be a distraction from the real story about Alex, his intelligence, training, reasoning ability, unique personality, and sense of humor. You will also learn of the interaction and communication between Pepperberg and Alex. If you are seeking a thorough, scientific exploration of an African Grey's cognitive abilities, then read Pepperberg's, The Alex Chronicles. Despite Pepperberg's credentials (her academic background), this is a book written for a lay person with no academic background. It is easy-to-read, well written, and fascinating.

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This was a very interesting book about animal intelligence--or, more specifically, how an animal trained in language can let us know what they know. Alex was an African Grey parrot, selected at random by a pet store owner to protect against any bias on the part of the author who purchased him for study. Dr. Pepperberg, who received her doctorate in theoretical chemistry, was well-schooled in the scientific method when she made the crossover to studying animal communication. Alex became her star pupil for the next 30 years, before dying suddenly about 20 years before his time. During their long association, Alex learned more than 100 words and was able to use them to show that he was not just "parroting" back random utterances but was able to use them to distinguish conceptually among issues of color, shape, size, number, etc. Where the book becomes most interesting is when he starts using comments spontaneously to express his own thoughts, such as telling Pepperberg unprompted that she needed to "calm down" one day when she entered the lab in some agitation. The night before his death, he used such phrases with her as "you be good," "I love you," and "you'll be in tomorrow?" He even showed a mind of his own by one day deciding to give wrong answers to questions that he had answered perfectly up until then. In the end, Pepperberg estimated his intelligence to be comparable perhaps to that of a five-year-old child. A notable subplot to the book is Pepperberg's story of how difficult it was to convince universities and especially funding sources to support her work. When she started in the field, there was little appreciation for her type of research, and it took her years of working with Alex and other birds to turn skeptics into supporters. My only quibble about the book is that it reads more like a research study than the personal memoir the title would lead one to expect. (I was hoping for something more like Wesley the Owl.) Putting that aside, Pepperberg is to be lauded for her groundbreaking work and we are all in her debt for being able to understand our animal friends just that much more.

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I really liked this book, but that's about as far as it got.

Let me start by saying that the story of Dr. Pepperberg's bond with
Alex is very touching, and if that is your cup of tea, you will
probably treasure this book. Ditto if you are a parrot fanatic.

I have an African grey parrot, but I'm not a fanatic, and I think I was expecting a
little more detail on how Alex was trained. Not as much as in "The
Alex Studies," which was a scientific research piece, but more that
could help me develop my bird. To be fair, this was not a realistic
expectation; the book was clearly not "How to Train Your African
Grey."

Nonetheless, the book was written cleanly, was a quick read and, as I
said, was a touching story. I think anyone with even a passing
interest in birds or the bond between human and pet will enjoy it.

In summary, if you are looking for a touching story about a woman and
her famous parrot, this is the book you are looking for. If you are
looking for parrot training tips, you won't find them here, but you
will still probably like the book.

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Near the end of her book Alex & Me, in a chapter called "What Alex Taught Me," the author Irene Pepperberg says: "Some people take this new understanding of animal minds as an argument for treating animals as if they had the same rights we give to ourselves. That is as wrong as ... " What is so remarkable about this quote is how jarring it is in a book that celebrates animal intelligence and the interconnectedness of all life. While THIS reviewer is not suggesting that we give the right to VOTE to grey parrots (if this reviewer had his way, not every HUMAN would have that sacred right), what is clear to me, from this absolutely grating and gratuitous paragraph (as though an evil gremlin had sneaked in this nasty disclaimer), is that whatever Alex HAD tried to teach Ms. Pepperberg, she did not learn. If this book has any meaning whatever, it is that animals DO (or ought to) have rights.

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It is a family joke that an aunt who had a dog would sometimes observe that "It can almost think". Irene Pepperberg has demonstrated with her beloved Alex, an african grey parrot, that not only can the bird with a brain the size of a shelled walnut communicate in human language but that it can understand what it is saying and can construct its own interpretations. Alex can certainly think. The example of Alex's description of an almond as a 'cork nut', combining the elements of the outer shell texture with the known edible content, demonstrates just how intelligent this bird is. As Irene says in several places throughout the book Alex demonstrates many traits that previous animal intelligence wisdom (read dogma) had said should be impossible. This book is a real treat from beginning to end. For those who don't want to believe that animal intelligence is a necessary precursor to the the evolution of human intelligence then this book is not for you.