 | |
| Species | African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) |
|---|---|
| Sex | Male |
| Hatched | 2020 (age 3–4) |
| Known for | Linguistic abilities popularized through YouTube |
| Owner | Victoria (Tori) Lacey and Dalton Mason |
Apollo (hatched April 2020) is an African grey parrot and the subject of the popular YouTube channel "Apollo and Frens" run by Victoria (Tori) Lacey and Dalton Mason. Apollo has been described as having the intelligence of a "human toddler" and can answer numerous complex questions in English. [1]
In December 2020, Victoria (Tori) Lacey and Dalton Mason purchased Apollo from Animal House Pet Center in Saint Petersburg, Florida, for $1,700. Apollo had been surrendered to the Animal House Pet Center by a previous owner who had clipped Apollo's wings. [1] Since purchasing him, Tori and Dalton have not clipped Apollo's wings, allowing them to return to their natural form. [2]
Tori and Dalton purchased Apollo with the intent to train him based on Irene Pepperberg's model/rival technique, and document the process through YouTube videos on their channel "ApolloandFrens". Their channel description says "Through showcasing the abilities and emotional intelligence of Apollo, we plan to pursue further legal rights for all parrots, much like those of dogs and cats." [3] They also own two caiques named Soleil and Ophelia.
Tori and Dalton train Apollo based on Irene Pepperberg's model/rival technique she developed to train her own African grey parrot, Alex. [3]
In the technique, the student (parrot) observes trainers interacting. One of the trainers models the desired student behavior, and is seen by the student as a rival for the other trainer's attention. The trainer and rival exchange roles so the student can see that the process is interactive. When a student (human or parrot) answers a question about an object correctly, they receive that object as a reward instead of a food reward, which is often used in other training techniques. Irene Pepperberg said the reward system is crucial, because it is the only way that students can make the direct connection between the object and the label that they have used. Food rewards are also sparingly used. Trainers sometimes make intentional mistakes so the students can see the consequences of an incorrect identification. Upon making a mistake, the trainer is scolded and the object is removed. This technique helped Pepperberg succeed with Alex where other scientists had failed in facilitating two-way communication with parrots. [4] [5]
Pepperberg's research environment often presented barriers to Alex's learning, such as the contradictory need for repetitive evaluation (to obtain statistically significant results) and Alex's need for novelty (to keep him engaged). [5] Although Tori and Dalton have partnered with some researchers at Eckerd College, they are more interested in Apollo's personal development than publishing his results in scientific journals. [6] Likewise, they have avoided some of Pepperberg's training issues by raising him in their own home, "like a human child" [6] and by choosing training directions based on Apollo's interests. In an interview, Tori said "[Apollo] lets us know what he wants to learn. What he’s interested in and we just progress in a path that he laid out for us." [7]
Tori and Dalton describe Apollo's general intelligence as that of "a human toddler". He can communicate in complete or nearly complete English sentences and knows the name of all the basic colors, a few materials, and many nouns. Apollo can answer questions such as "what's this?" "what color?" "what made of?" "what am I doing?" and can communicate outside of a question/answer structure. [1] [2]
On his YouTube channel, Apollo has been shown asking several questions and understanding the answers he receives. [8] This makes him the second recorded non-human animal to have ever asked a question, the first being Alex. Apes who have been trained to use sign language have so far failed to ever ask a single question. [2] [9]
Irene Maxine Pepperberg is an American scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently an Adjunct Research Professor at Boston University. Pepperberg also serves on the Advisory Council of METI. She is well known for her comparative studies into the cognitive fundamentals of language and communication, and she was one of the first to work on language learning in animals other than primate species, by extension to a bird species. Pepperberg is also active in wildlife conservation, especially in relation to parrots.
Comparative psychology is the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. The phrase comparative psychology may be employed in a narrow and a broad meaning. In its narrow meaning, it refers to the study of the similarities and differences in the psychology and behavior of different species. In a broader meaning, comparative psychology includes comparisons between different biological and socio-cultural groups, such as species, sexes, developmental stages, ages, and ethnicities. Research in this area addresses many different issues, uses many different methods and explores the behavior of many different species from insects to primates.
Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition.
Clever Hans was a horse that was claimed to have performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reactions of his trainer. He discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues. In honour of Pfungst's study, the anomalous artifact has since been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in the observer-expectancy effect and later studies in animal cognition. Pfungst was an assistant to German philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, who incorporated the experience with Hans into his further work on animal psychology and his ideas on phenomenology.
Animal languages are forms of non-human animal communication that show similarities to human language. Animals communicate through a variety of signs, such as sounds and movements. Signing among animals may be considered a form of language if the inventory of signs is large enough. The signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition. In experimental tests, animal communication may also be evidenced through the use of lexigrams by chimpanzees and bonobos.
Alex was a grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. In her book "Alex & Me", Pepperberg describes her unique relationship with Alex and how Alex helped her understand animal minds. Alex was an acronym for avian language experiment, or avian learning experiment. He was named the "Einstein of parrots" and at two years old was correctly answering questions made for six-year-old humans.
Research into great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans to communicate with humans and each other using sign language, physical tokens, lexigrams, and imitative human speech. Some primatologists argue that the use of these communication methods indicate primate "language" ability, though this depends on one's definition of language. The cognitive tradeoff hypothesis suggests that human language skills evolved at the expense of the short-term and working memory capabilities observed in other hominids.
Human–animal communication is the communication observed between humans and other animals, ranging from non-verbal cues and vocalizations to the use of language.
Ask Shagg was a syndicated daily comic strip drawn by cartoonist Peter Guren from 1980 to 2020. It was distributed by Creators Syndicate; it had been distributed by United Feature Syndicate from 1980 until 1995. The strip has run in dozens of newspapers including The Boston Globe, The Columbus Dispatch, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In each strip Guren, through his Shagg E. Dawg character, answered questions from readers about the animal kingdom. The strip retired on 5 January 2020.
The difficulty of defining or measuring intelligence in non-human animals makes the subject difficult to study scientifically in birds. In general, birds have relatively large brains compared to their head size. Furthermore, bird brains have two-to-four times the neuron packing density of mammal brains, for higher overall efficiency. The visual and auditory senses are well developed in most species, though the tactile and olfactory senses are well realized only in a few groups. Birds communicate using visual signals as well as through the use of calls and song. The testing of intelligence in birds is therefore usually based on studying responses to sensory stimuli.
N'kisi is a grey parrot thought to exhibit advanced English talking skills and other abilities.
Talking birds are birds that can mimic the speech of humans. There is debate within the scientific community over whether some talking parrots also have some cognitive understanding of the language. Birds have varying degrees of talking ability: some, like the corvids, are able to mimic only a few words and phrases, while some budgerigars have been observed to have a vocabulary of almost 2,000 words. The common hill myna, a common pet, is well known for its talking ability and its relative, the common starling, is also adept at mimicry. Wild cockatoos in Australia have been reported to have learned human speech by cultural transmission from ex-captive birds that have integrated into the flock.
Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.
Parrot training, also called parrot teaching, is the application of training techniques to modify the behavior of household companion parrots. Training is used to deal with behavior problems such as biting and screaming, to train husbandry behaviors such as allowing claw trimming without restraint or accepting a parrot harness, and to teach various tricks.
A talking animal or speaking animal is any non-human animal that can produce sounds or gestures resembling those of a human language. Several species or groups of animals have developed forms of communication which superficially resemble verbal language, however, these usually are not considered a language because they lack one or more of the defining characteristics, e.g. grammar, syntax, recursion, and displacement. Researchers have been successful in teaching some animals to make gestures similar to sign language, although whether this should be considered a language has been disputed.
Parrots (Psittaciformes), also known as psittacines, are birds with a strong curved beak, upright stance, and clawed feet. They are conformed by four families that contain roughly 410 species in 101 genera, found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The four families are the Psittaculidae, Psittacidae, Cacatuoidea (cockatoos), and Strigopidae. One-third of all parrot species are threatened by extinction, with a higher aggregate extinction risk than any other comparable bird group. Parrots have a generally pantropical distribution with several species inhabiting temperate regions as well. The greatest diversity of parrots is in South America and Australasia.
The grey parrot, also known as the Congo grey parrot, Congo African grey parrot or African grey parrot, is an Old World parrot in the family Psittacidae. The Timneh parrot (Psittacus timneh) once was identified as a subspecies of the grey parrot, but has since been elevated to a full species.
Theory of mind in animals is an extension to non-human animals of the philosophical and psychological concept of theory of mind (ToM), sometimes known as mentalisation or mind-reading. It involves an inquiry into whether non-human animals have the ability to attribute mental states to themselves and others, including recognition that others have mental states that are different from their own. To investigate this issue experimentally, researchers place non-human animals in situations where their resulting behavior can be interpreted as supporting ToM or not.
"The Great Silence" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ted Chiang that originated as the onscreen text for a video installation of the same name created in collaboration with Allora & Calzadilla. It was initially published as a story in e-flux Journal in May 2015. The story also appeared in the 2016 anthology The Best American Short Stories and in the 2019 collection Exhalation: Stories.
