Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() Pepperberg doesn't go into great depth about the training or the conclusions as a result of Alex's abilities but she does discuss them superficially. This memoir of Alex, his accomplishments, and the training he underwent to learn to speak and comprehend as well as he did is very definitely written for the lay reader. ![]() She makes the conscious decision not to bond too closely with Alex in order to maintain a needed distance in training and to ensure that her scientific results were unquestionable. He was a young bird whom Pepperberg chooses randomly to be the subject of her biological language studies. Starting with Alex's death and the numbness Pepperberg, the scientist who worked with Alex for more than 30 years, felt afterwards, the narrative then shifts backwards in time to Pepperberg's childhood love of birds, her marriage, and education. And when he died, unexpectedly, at a young age for a parrot, his obituary ran in the biggest newspapers and magazines of our time, highlighting his importance in our understanding of language formation and acquisition and in just far how our previous assumptions about human only language were incorrect. Alex the African Grey parrot was justifiably famous in the scientific community. ![]()
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