Although I am not the creator, this video is intended for educational purposes under YouTube’s fair-use policy.

Alex (1976 – September 6, 2007[1]) was an African Grey Parrot and the subject of a thirty-year (1977-2007) experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard and Brandeis University. Pepperberg bought Alex in a regular pet shop when he was about one year old.[2] The name Alex is an acronym for Avian Learning EXperiment.[3]His successor was Griffin.

Before Pepperberg’s work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that birds were not intelligent and could only use words by mimicking, but Alex’s accomplishments indicated that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively.[4] Pepperberg wrote that Alex’s intelligence was on a par with that of dolphins and great apes.[5] She also reported that Alex had the intelligence of a five-year-old human[3] and had not even reached his full potential by the time he died.[6] She said that the bird had the emotional level of a human two-year-old at the time of his death.[7]


    27 replies to "Alex The Parrot"

    • Vincenza Cozzolino

      Sicuramente la dottoressa era affezionata ma come si spiega la autodeplumazione? Chredo fosse molto stressato!!!

    • Mom Mom

      Sad to see these studies , shameful

    • Mom Mom

      Alex wanted love

    • Mom Mom

      I’m sick of people overworking these birds. It shortens their life and it’s torture just to satisfy the researchers. They have no love lost for the bird but the birds want lots of love. Shame

    • Lidia Marazzi

      Versione in italiano grazie

    • F. Apollo M. Arenas

      She took care of him very well. They were like a couple, a loving couple.

    • 히트0319

      She is not bird.
      She is Human.

      End Aye M bird.

    • Prudent Thoughts

      My love and respect for Alex and Dr Pepperberg still stands but it definitely hurts to hear the Alex begging to go back to its cage repeatedly .

    • speak to bird

      danke nice video .beautiful 💐💐

    • Lynn Lobliner

      From another video I couldn't believe how barren his JAIL CELL was. He was put into a cage with NO cover, no toys, no items of comfort. When he said "go back" she refused him. I guess he had 30 years of it and that was ENOUGH. And I wondered about the feathers — I've seen other pet birds on YT with feather issues.

    • Alf Beckenbauer

      lol to all that comments speaking about stress or anthropomorphising the bird's reaction.

      I'm not really impressed for the parrot's performance in this video:

      1.- No regrets for first experiment.
      2.- She made two questions, and the parrot seems to be answering waiting a reaction. Clever Hans effect.
      3.- Same for the How-Many-Keys experiment.
      4.- Asking to "go back" too many times, and requesting water without drinking. Seems like random speech. The lady just adapt it to "you're just asking to interrupt".
      5.- What colour is the bigger? Both keys are green!
      6.- Just like on the third experiment, she asked 4 times the same question. And the answer on both cases were "two". Again, seems like Clever Hans effect.

      Nice video, nice parrot, I see it was really well-trained. But, in this particular video, I just see no evidence of animal intelligence.

    • djlayland

      Nolan subscribed

    • McRocket

      These things no longer impress me. Leave the bird alone. Feed him, love him, enjoy him and stop treating him like an experiment.

    • Jules Mpc

      No wonder he died sooo early!!!!

    • Dahlia Dezay

      Alex and other birds go through this training process locked in closed labs, stressed out to learn and answer questions while all what they need and actually been created for is to be free enjoying their time with flying or whatever their nature drives them to do. I feel so sad when I watch this kind of videos, these birds need love and compassion which they don't find in these labs, who said that a parrot needs to count or learn colors and shapes…etc??? Why stressing them out and find them dead the next days like what happened to Alex??? So sad and humans are so cruel!

    • mielcar27

      The last words of this parrot was : "You are a good human i love you" this words was to targeted to this woman.

    • Telepathic Birds

      they're smart…but they belong in the wild…..

    • Judith Birch

      Alex was a poorly birdie I'm sure he was well cared for God bless him 🎄🎄

    • Sole

      I'm cringing so much while holding my own African Grey. I would never want her to go through such stress.

    • YIZHOU WANG

      So damn cute!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • 이진재

      Oh, silly guys. She was not crazy. If alex did many things, then she can make him go back. But he didn't do many thing. Plz watch other videos and leave comments.
      Go and read woman's book. The feather is not because of her, that's she couldn't find her perfect job and she sent alex to other person for some months. So he flucked his feather. Why you make her a crazy woman?

    • John Connor

      Man, poor little Alex. He's probably done that damn experiment thousands of times. If you look closely at his neck you can see missing feathers from stress plucking.

    • Snatco

      It really makes you feel for the parrot

    • F0XYr4bB!T

      irene pls luv me

    • Jorge Contreras

      "Want to go back" He wants to go back yet is forced to stay there. If you wanted to stop a session and come back later, you would feel you have the right to, right? Griffin, her newest African Grey says the same thing and doesn't get to, people are also mentioning that Griffins feathers are starting to get a lot like Alex's. Poor birds, not everything needs to be studied.. :/

    • tutorials by roxy and oless

      Woooooooooow !!!!!!!'m

    • fantage marz

      grrrrr your not taking care of him well! poor creature! hes not a machine that talks! hes a living creature! and yeah hes much smarter than you! he would never take you and put u in a rainforest where he asks you to do bird calls!

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