Everyday Scientist

man, parrots are stupid

June 12, 2006 at 10:16 pm | sam | literature, nerd

Andrew sent me a cool paper (although his version had some humorous typos). The idea was to ask some parrots to count and add numbers. The birds—Alex and Griffin—hadn’t been explictly trained in this practice.

The results: Parrots are as stupid as children. Man, just look at all the stupid mistakes those bird-brains made:

OK, it got that 4+2=6, but it thought 5+0=6. Idiot. Even I know that the correct answer is 5. Oh, and here’s my favorite part:

Of interest was that these experiments were unplanned. My students and I had begun a sequential auditory number session (training to respond to, for example, three computer-generated clicks with the vocal label “three”) with another bird, Griffin, in the standard manner, by saying “Listen,” clicking (this time, twice), and then asking “Griffin, how many?” Because Griffin refused to answer, we replicated the trial. Alex, who often interrupts
Griffin’s sessions with phrases like “Talk clearly” or who occasionally answers even though he is not part of the procedure, said “four.” I told him to be quiet, assuming that his vocalization was not intentional. We then replicated the trial yet again with Griffin, who remained silent; Alex now said “six.” I thus decided to replicate the Boysen and Berntson (1989) study […]

I mean, Griffin was so stupid that even his parrot friend had to tell him to speak clearly. And anyway, it’s “speak clearer,” you stupid parrot. Gosh.