Smart Alex
African grey parrots have enjoyed popularity for thousands of years. They've been popular pets since ancient Egypt, perhaps because they're sociable and fun. They are able to repeat words and phrases they hear, and they can even copy the sound of laughter or a ringing phone. However, Alex's abilities show that parrots can actually use language, not just repeat it.
Training a parrot to speak
Animal psychologist Dr Irene Pepperbereg has studied parrot intelligence since 1997. Alex is her star pupil and he's able to answer complicated questions like 'What object is green and has tree corners?' through her work, Pepperberg has made Alex famous. She's been able to show that parrots can actually think.
Birds get bored too
Because they are so intelligent, parrots can get bored easily. They're very active and they need things to stimulate their curiosity. Pepperberg created a computer program for Alex, so he could choose from four activities- watching a video, listening to music, seeing pictures, or playing a game. To begin with, Alex was curious and played with the system for an hour a day, but then he got bored with it. However, Pepperberg managed to get him interested again by changing the content of the program.
A sense of humour?
Another African grey parrot who has been in the news is N'kisi, from New York. Apparently, N'kisi has a vocabulary of 950 words and can even make jokes. Once, when he saw another parrots hanging upside down, he said 'they should put this bird on the camera'.
Clever Rico
Rico, a border collie from Germany, is a surprisingly clever dog. Although Rico can't speak, he can understand more than 200 words, and he's able to learn the names of new toys easily. What's more, Rico can remember the new vocabulary weeks later.
Border collies are well- known to be intelligent animals. They are used as sheepdogs and can respond to many different whistles. They can also be trained as rescue dogs, for finding people lost under the snow, for example . However, Rico's abilities show that collies are even smarter than we thought.
Famous on Tv
Professor Julia Fischer of the Max - Planck Institute in Leipzig first saw Rico on televison, on popular German TV programme called 'Wetten Dass?' Millions of viewers were amazed to see how Rico could understand his owner's instructions and fetch things. He could go and get the correct toy from among many in his collection.
A mathematical horse?
Fischer was suspicious because she remebered tthe case of the horse called Clever Hans. Hans was able to answer mathematical problems by tapping his foot the correct number of times. However, a psychologist discovered that in reality, the horse's owner was giving signals to Hans with his eyebrows. Fischer decided to test the possibility that Rico's owner was doing the same thing.
Rico passes his exams
Fischer put Rico and his owner in one room and placed Rico's toys in a different room. She asked the dog's owner the request different toys in a random order. It wasn't possible for Rico's owner to point to the toys, but Rico was able to fetch the correct toy 37 times out of 40. In one test, he also managed to learn the name of a new toy after hearing it once. A new toy was placed in his collection, and when Rico heard the name, he was able to correctly fetch the toy. 'This tells us he can do simple logic,' says Fischer, 'He's actually thinking.'
