The things you don't know about. From NYT:
He knew his colors and shapes, he learned more than 100 English words, and with his own brand of one-liners he established himself in television shows, scientific reports and news articles as perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird.
I'm reminded, of course, of the ape language experiments in the 1970s -- Sara, Koko, and others -- that were shot down on methodological grounds with arguments that I at the time considered specious. I'm not going to dispute that Alex's use of language wasn't up to simian standards, but we do persist in underestimating the intelligence of the so-called "lower" animals. The appropriateness of his comments is eerie:
Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, she recalled, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”
Take a look at this post by Andrew Sullivan as well. It would appear that our fellows on this planet are a lot more sophisticated than we like to think. Conservatives, not so much. (And it's amazing how that story ties in with this post.)
And people laugh at me for talking to squirrels.
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