The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots

Although again due to the delay of my response , you may have even have forgotten that I ordered and received quitea while ago this book, which ,although I am not a biologist nor a psychologist , I found a quite interesting book . Although I am a scientist but not a Specialist in the field , I have had several discussions with so called psycologists who ,contrary to my opinion, deny the intelligence ,be it more reduced than ours,of quite a number of animals Their degree of intelligence depends of course of the kind of animal , but the study of apes in this respect is well known The study of cognitive and certainly of communicative abilities of Parrots was for me quite new and interesting. I belong to the people who believe in the intelligence of animals and not in the exclusive wisdom of humans.Hence my interest in this book .Who knows how smart the animals might become ,given enough time like we had.

If you are looking for more than a series of scientific papers which read rather dryly, then perhaps this book isn't for you. I picked it up so I might learn a little science which might help me to better understand my African Grey, Buddy. To date, he hasn't yet responded to any of the techniques used in the book for training Alex, perhaps because he was already three years old when I bought him. Having said that, it does help me to be aware that he has cognitive capacities that far exceed the near-mindless ability to "parrot." Each time he says "hello" to me when I come home in the evening, or whenever he imitates my dog whistle while I am playing with the dog, it demonstrates that he is a sentient being, albeit on a different level.

The work that Irene Pepperberg and Alex have done is incredible, and this book would be fascinating if the "Notes" were included in the text and the references were footnoted at the end of the book or at the bottom of the page. While the use of APA style substantiates the credibiltiy of her research and increases the book's value as an intellectual property, it is difficult to find a complete sentence without multiple references cited in parentheses scattered throughout. This makes the normal "flow" of reading almost impossible, and unnecessarily compromises both enjoyment and ease of comprehension. Definitely read this book if you're interested, but keep the aspirin close for the headache you're bound to get while trying to sort out the legitimate text from the references.

WARNING ABOUT THE KINDLE EDITION: The Kindle edition of this book omits all the images, including diagrams that were meant to help explain things! All you get instead is some text saying "to view this image, refer to the print version of this title". I sure wish Amazon had told me up front that I'm apparently expected to buy this book from them twice?Furthermore, the (frequent) footnotes aren't hyperlinks, causing the reader to have to manually find the correct page at the end of the book and then return to the page they were at.I'm still enjoying the book, but I'm definitely not happy about its Kindle edition.

This book describes the behaviors that no one expected. This is a great book about parrot intelligence and interaction.

If you like parrots, especially African Greys, you'll find a lot of fascinating information in this book. We learned so much about avian intelligence from Alex, and this book is a fitting legacy and tribute.

This is a great book about how Alex came to be and how he became so smart. Dr Irene Pepperberg chose Alex as a young parrot and began teaching him language and to associate words with objects. Alex became very smart and could hold a pretty decent conversation. This book shows just how intelligent parrots are and they are more than just pets, they are our lifelong companions. The Alex Studies is an excellent read, I reccomend this book highly.

I have followed Irene Pepperburg's articles on her African Grey Parrot, Alex, for years, both learning and teaching my own African Greys with her methods. I was so happy to see her write this book as her own personal tribute to Alex who was not just a lab specimen but a friend as well. Thank you, Irene. Alex will be missed by many.

Very interesting - I have an African Grey so it was an eye-opener - I thought mine was clever - great book Thanks

a great book for bird's lovers

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L'auteure est une femme exceptionnelle, qui s'est lancée dans une vaste étude a travers des décennies pour scientifiquement étudier et quantifier l'intelligence des perroquets gris du Gabon, et leur capacité incroyable de compréhension du langage humain. Elle a su démontrer leur utilisation de notre langage, leur vocabulaire, leur compréhension des formes, des objets, leur matière, leur couleur, leur nombre et de restituer tout ceci en langage. Tout ceci n'étant pas de la simple répétition, mais véritablement, avec un animal entraîné, de l'intelligence qui s'exprime, avec ses envies. Ce livre résume en 330 pages tout cet incroyable travail de recherche étalé sur des décennies.Pour un non scientifique (comme moi), ce livre en anglais peut être un peu dur a lire. Les phrases sont très souvent entrecoupées de références a des études d'autres scientifiques, ce qui en rend la lecture difficile. Rare sont les phrases pleines non ponctuées de ces références précises et datées (j'aurai préféré un petit renvoi a des notes en bas de page ou ailleurs - libre au lecteur de s'y référer ou non).Incroyable travail de recherche animale.

Nice, clinical, Alex was definitely a special kind of boy. Can be dry read at times. Unfortunately if you think after reading this book you will be able to teach your own parrot how to be more communicative it won't help. Each parrot is as unique as a child. Some have better skills then others and at different levels.