Irene Pepperberg in Conversation

http://chicagohumanities.org - See more Chicago Humanities Festival events.

Irene Pepperberg spent 30 years of her career working with Alex, the worlds most famous parrot. Her recent book Alex and Me offers both unique insights on the workings of the avian mind and a tribute to a beloved research partner. In her talk, Pepperberg shares research findings and thoughts on animal intelligence and, most crucially, humor, with Alison Cuddy, host of Chicago Public Radios Eight Forty-Eight.

Irene Pepperburg's comments are copyright 2009-2010 Irene Pepperburg.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Alex the parrot
• language and animals
• animal linguistics
• Irene Pepperberg
• Alison Cuddy
• Eight Forty-Eight
• Alex and Me
• Chicago Humanities Festival

[fancigal]

and not only that, but this book should clear the misconceptions of Irene "overworking" her birds. She does recall a lot of training situations, but she does talk a lot about what the students do with the birds during chill-out time, and what Irene does with them. You have to build a relationship in order for something like this research to happen. So people should read this book, and maybe they would realize that this bird wasnt an "abused" experiment, but loved like a friend.

[senegal8]

The book "Alex and Me" was a fun quick read, but also provocative. If animals have this cognitive ability (and the evidence is growing fast), then what does our species owe to theirs? Given that this sense of moral duty is one sided (hard to imagine a tiger declining to eat clever prey), can I ignore my disquiet as an inappropriate carryover from human interactions? Only one of lots of new questions come out of reassessing our own niche...

[Evanvids321]

To anyone that hasn't read "Alex and Me," it's just incredible. I HIGHLY recommend it!

[MsFinigin]

I love Alex. Irene Peppperberg is an amazing person. I've read Alex and Me twice and it just blows me away!

[Ashton123082]

Thank you for sharing this. It hasn't gotten much traffic, but I am posting it in Facebook and hopefully more people will watch it.