Animals in Translation

[emily655321]

This is an exerpt from the book Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour, by Temple Grandin. Grandin is autistic, and has written the book to shed light on the ways animals think, as well as the cognitive differences characteristic of autism. This exerpt appears on the CIWF Trust's website about Animal Sentience, the link to which appears at the end of this post.

I just had to post this, because it's so neat! :D I haven't read the book yet, but I'm going to try to find it.


Not very long ago, Dr. Pepperberg began trying to teach Alex and another gray parrot, Griffin, to sound out phonemes, which are the sounds that letters and letter combinations represent. English has forty phonemes altogether. She and her colleagues wanted to see if the birds understood that words are made out of letters that could be recombined to make other words, so they started training the birds with magnetic refrigerator letters.

One day their corporate sponsors were visiting Dr. Pepperberg’s lab, and she and her staff wanted to show off what Alex and Griffin could do. So they put a bunch of colored plastic refrigerator letters on a tray and started asking Alex questions.

“Alex, what sound is blue?”

Alex made the sound “Sssss.” That was right; the blue letter was “S.”

Dr. Pepperberg said, “Good birdie,” and Alex said, “Want a nut,” because he was supposed to get a nut whenever he gave the right answer.

But Dr. Pepperberg didn’t want him sitting there eating a nut during the limited time she had with their sponsors, so she told Alex to wait, and then asked, “What sound is green?”

The green example was the letter combination of “SH” and Alex said, “Ssshh.” He was right again.

Dr. Pepperberg said, “Good parrot,” and Alex said, “Want a nut.”

But Dr. Pepperberg said, “Alex, wait. What sound is orange?”

Alex got that one right, too, and he still didn’t get his nut. They just kept going on and on, making him sound out letters for his audience. Alex was obviously getting more frustrated by the minute.

Finally Alex lost his patience.

Here’s the way Dr. Pepperberg describes it: Alex “gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, ‘Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh.”

Alex had spelled “nut.” Dr. Pepperberg and her team were spending hours and hours training him on plastic refrigerator letters to see if Alex could eventually be taught that words are made out of sounds, and he already knew how to spell. He was miles ahead of them.

http://www.animalsentience.com/features/animals_in_translation_1.htm

[Riesa]

Wow, gave me chills. Regular Dr. Doolittles, aren't they?

[BSturdy]

That is so interesting - I became a vegetarian after seeing a pigeon getting run over a few years ago. I was having lunch (chicken sandwich) outside at the local algerian cafe when a dustcart squashed a pigeon. The dead pigeons mate kept trying to revive it (trying to push it up etc..) and became increasingly desperate, and so on for hours - animals do not just run on 'instinct'

I remember scientific papers written a decade ago concluding that chickens are self-conscious

I'd love a grey parrot, but they like flocking (?) and can get depressed. As you probably know they live for longer than most people - 90 years is not uncommon....ok I'm off now..

True story. An old lady, a friend of my mum's in the village where I grey up had an African grey and two dogs. I remember visiting her once and we were in the kitchen and the parrot was talking and we paid attention to it (I was rapt) then we were sitting down having tea or something. The parrot started making a weird tapping on the bottom of his cage and the dogs came running in and looking at their food bowls expectantly. Then the parrot made a loud laughing sound. The lady explained that he liked tricking the dogs by making the sound that she made tapping their food bowls!

Cetaceans are the one's to watch intelligence wise

[Koa]

OFF TOPIC:
emily, lovely new avatar! it makes me miss alex but not even that much...
(do you remember when you chngaed your avatar and there was a riot until you brought alex back? ;))

[emily655321]

(do you remember when you chngaed your avatar and there was a riot until you brought alex back? ;))Oh, yes! I forgot that. What was it that I changed it to?

(You missed my muppet avatar! It was the Swedish Chef for a few days.)

[Koa]

I think you had changed Alex to a pic of yourself... ;)

[Virgil]

That is so interesting - I became a vegetarian after seeing a pigeon getting run over a few years ago. I was having lunch (chicken sandwich) outside at the local algerian cafe when a dustcart squashed a pigeon. The dead pigeons mate kept trying to revive it (trying to push it up etc..) and became increasingly desperate, and so on for hours - animals do not just run on 'instinct'

Yeah, but chickens and all birds eat all sorts of other animals that are smaller than they. Isn't the lesson that we shouldn't be cannibals but eat other meat? ;)

Ben Franklyn in his Autobiography says (I haven't read it, but I've been told this) that he was for a time a vegetarian. But he was on a ship once and there wasn't that many vegetables to go around. The crew having caught a large fish cut it open to eat. Franklyn remembered how much he had loved cod and was trying to stick to his principles. Well, when they cut open the fish, he noticed that there were other smaller fishes inside the fish. Well, he reasoned, if fish could eat other fish, and animals could eat other animals, why should he be a vegetarian.