Customer Reviews

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process

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....becomes "very much aware of that peoples' profound sense of oneness with nature. I resonated with that." Here Dr Pepperberg is talking about Native Americans' relationship with nature, and I find her view as a scientist all-encompassing and highly complementary with (and probably an enhancement to) her research -- TOTALLy unlike those of her colleagues at NIH who cut themselves off from the sumn-total of the reality of her work with Alex the Grey Parrot -- and who were so unflinching in their disparaging comments of her work with Alex.

The book begins with the aftermath of Alex's untimely death -- he should have lived for at least another 20 years, and his death was a great loss not only to the scientific community, but to those "ordinary" human beings who were touched and changed by his presence.

As the book continues, we read about "No Name" -- the parakeet that brought joy to a little girls's insulated world, and Bluey, Greeny and other much-loved birds who brought sunshine into her otherwise lonely childhood -- and then Charlie, whose feathers found their way into an MIT meeting.

And then, at Harvard, one question "What animal should I study?" brought Alex into Irene's life, for the next 30 wonderful, trying (including an extremely dense ticket agent, who had trouble understanding why "a bird" would need luggage), frustrating, joyful years.

This book was a labor of love -- as were the 30 wonderful years with Alex, whose "brain the size of a walnut" astounded Irene and her colleagues with its information gathering and associative abilities.

I was highly amused to read about the withdrawal of cardboard (he'd chew it) and feeding tofu to calm down Alex's raging hormones -- hey, whatever works!!! (It worked)

Alex's death touched me too. I too grieved at the loss of such an amiable, "special" individual -- but then again, Irene's research was NOT ever in vain -- it shows us what so many pet owners and caring animal handlers can agree with -- there is a special spark of recognition and cognition in every animal that, with loving attention and encouragement, can bloom into a special human-animal bond of communication. Alex was by far a highly special example of such a being.

There are so many ways that Alex and Me by Irene Pepperburg could have been better that it leaves me feeling as sad for the book that should have been as it does for Alex's death. Unlike Dr. Pepperburg, who for some reason thought the book should start with Alex's death, I will start at the beginning of the story. That is one of the main problems with the book-- Alex doesn't make an appearance until Page 58, more than a quarter of the way through the book. The first 25 pages contain excerpts from the sympathy mail she received upon Alex's death, which, since at that point we haven't met Alex yet, is somewhat meaningless. The next 28 pages take us through the tedious story of Dr. Pepperburg's childhood, college days and marriage, and I do mean tedious! It was nearly enough to make me put the book down and not pick it back up.

Once Alex finally makes an appearance, the book becomes more interesting. However, Dr. Pepperburg doesn't do a convincing job of showing the bond between herself and Alex-- there are a few places where she shows it such as when Alex becomes deathly ill with Aspergillosis, but far too much of the book is spent detailing her problems finding research funding and her moves from campus to campus trying to find a home for her project.

That being said, when she does allow the story to focus on Alex, it is touching and amusing. It is impossible not to fall in love with the parrot and become awed at the intelligence he demonstrates. I became so attached to Alex that when I finished reading the book I went back and re-read the first 25 pages because now I could finally relate to the sense of loss and grief expressed by others.

At the end, there are two questions that Dr. Pepperburg left unanswered-- she doesn't tell us what caused Alex's early death and she doesn't let us know how Alex's work is continuing. If Alex's life is to mean anything, then we need to know that the research started with him will go on. However Dr. Pepperburg starts the book with his death and ends it with his death, doing a major injustice to Alex in the process.

I first want to correct something in the product description above: the claim that Alex's last words to Irene were, "You be good. I love you." To me this seems to be trying to give the impression that the bird knew he was dying and was saying goodbye. In fact Alex was saying goodbye in the same way he did nightly, and those weren't intended as dying words.

The actual conversation in the book:
"You be good. I love you," Alex said.
"I love you too."
"You'll be in tomorrow?"
"Yes, I'll be in tomorrow."

With that cleared up, this is a very quick, entertaining, and potentially important read. Anyone who has ever bonded with an animal will feel the grief reading through the condolences the author received after Alex's death. There are also many laugh out loud moments describing his antics.

I've read works about animal thinking by Donald Griffin and Bernd Heinrich, both mentioned in the book, but Alex's story was completely new to me. I'm not sure how much repetition there will be for those who knew of his fame or have read the author's previous, apparently much more science-oriented book about Alex.

I've long believed that most humans and scientists are both ignorant and arrogant in how they regard other animals and that's the topic of the final chapter What Alex Taught Me. In one paragraph about animals and political rights, it wasn't clear to me exactly what the author had in mind, but I found myself in complete agreement with everything else she had to say in this chapter. I salute her strength in going against the grain of mainstream thinking with regard to animals in her work with Alex, and I hope his life will cause others to learn as well.

When scientist Irene Pepperberg wanted to study animal cognition and language, she purchased an African Grey Parrot, who she named Alex. What followed was a thirty-year partnership that rocked the foundations of our understanding of animal intelligence and challenged all previous assumptions of the phrase "birdbrain." Pepperberg writes beautifully, bringing the study of language and cognition to an easily-understood level without dumbing down the impact of her work. Beyond science, however, Pepperberg captures the dignity and personality of Alex, a lovable and admirable creature whose early death was a tragic loss.

All my life, I have been fascinated with the idea of cross-species communication. As a young girl, I devoured books about the ape language experiments and John C. Lilly's work with dolphins. It is mildly surprising, therefore, that I missed out on the news about Alex the talking parrot. I don't recall hearing one thing about Pepperberg's work with him until I heard about this book. And knew that I had to read it.

Alex was an African gray parrot who worked with scientist Irene Pepperberg for about thirty years. The book actually opens and ends with discussion of Alex's untimely death at the age of 31 in September of 2007. Now, I was not a fan of this animal, and am not particularly fond of birds, but I sobbed like an idiot over Pepperberg's reminiscences and the pages of notes and tributes that she received after his death. You'd have to be hard-hearted indeed to be immune. And apparently Alex touched many, many lives in his own unique way. None more so than the scientist who worked with him.

Pepperberg seems to be a bit of an odd bird herself. She had a strange upbringing and was by her own account socially awkward. Awkward, but wicked smart. She excelled academically and despite her interest in biology devoted herself to the study of chemistry, eventually earning a Ph.D. in the field. Unfortunately, by the time she completed her matriculation she realized her true interests lay elsewhere. Late in the game she made the switch to animal behavior. Her unusual background was one of many professional hindrances Pepperberg describes through the course of this book. There were never enough research grants, or lab space, or open minds. Well, all good stories need conflict.

And the real story here is about the work she and Alex achieved over the course of his life. African grays are among the best talkers in the avian world. Pepperberg's idea to embark on language studies with a bird was fairly revolutionary back in the 70's. The experiments Pepperberg describes and the results achieved are unquestionably fascinating. And far from being a mere test subject, Alex as described has a personality that's larger than life.

Alex & Me is very interesting on multiple levels--as far as it goes. But ultimately, that was my biggest frustration with this book. Totaling a scant 240 pages, the book never really went into anything in depth. Partly it is a memoir of Pepperberg's life, but everything is discussed fairly superficially--her childhood, her relationship with her husband, their eventual divorce, professional rivalries, and various friendships. Names of people are plugged in throughout the book, but not one other human is fleshed out significantly. Likewise, the science was absolutely riveting, but too often for my liking Pepperberg glossed over the details of her work, perhaps fearing she'd bore lay readers. It left me craving much more information, but to it's credit, Alex & Me did reawaken my interest in this subject.

Rarely do I come across a book I just can't put down. This was one of those books. It arrived in the afternoon mail, and I finished it before going to bed that day. This wasn't because of any life-changing revelations or cliffhangers, but for other reasons.

Partly, it was because Dr. Pepperberg's writing style is clear and fast-paced, which is unusual for a PhD writing about anything. Though the book uses her clinical experiments as the setting for this story, it reads like a good novel rather than a jargon-laden thesis dragged down by passive voice and mind-numbing detail. Combine that solid writing with a highly interesting, engaging account of one person's experience with another living creature, and you get a book of this caliber.

Dr. Pepperberg takes us on a 30-year journey (with a side trip to her past) that she shared with a bird who did things that supposedly birds cannot do. Anyone who has spent time paying attention (in an intelligent, focused fashion) to a cat or dog knows that humans aren't the only animals with feelings, reasoning ability, language, and other cognitive abilities.

My yard is home to two robin families, who return to nest here every summer. Having interacted with them quite a bit over the years, I'm fully aware that birds can think and can express themselves. The degree of expression and thinking that Dr. Pepperberg discovered in Alex, however, goes beyond anything I have witnessed. And it's quite impressive.

It's also impressive that Dr. Pepperberg persevered through years of hardship, staying true to her commitment to care for and study this bird. Hardships included marriage problems, job changes, relocations, funding problems, and political issues inside the worlds of science, academia, and publishing. This aspect of the story is probably what made the book so compelling for me.

If you've ever dealt with a demanding cat, you can relate to various accounts of Alex's personality. He could be mean and bossy when it suited him. He could also be caring and empathetic. When he was bored, scared, excited, irritated, or happy, he let others know.

Dr. Pepperberg does the lecture circuit, and when she speaks about caring for a parrot, she is adamant that you cannot leave these animals alone in a cage all day. They are very social creatures. Locking them up in solitary confinement is cruel. And it damages them emotionally. You'll see the effects emerge in such behavior as chewing their tail feathers to a bloody pulp.

Parrots get bored, rather easily. To get statistically viable data on Alex, it was necessary to conduct the same experiments repeatedly. Dr. Pepperberg recounts several incidences of Alex's reactions to the boredom of doing the same simple things over and over. On the surface, some of these reactions were merely humorous. But they also provided further insight into his personality and abilities. Dr. Pepperberg explains what these are and what they mean.

On several levels, this book is captivating. The central story of it ends abruptly, with the unexpected death of Alex long before his time should have been up.

This book departs from the typical 10 chapter format of nonfictions books. It has 9 chapters, instead.

The first chapter is about the aftermath of Alex's death and it serves as a good introduction to the story that preceded those sad days. Prior to this book, I had no knowledge of Dr. Pepperberg or Alex. But they were quite the celebrities in some circles, had made several television appearances, and had been written about in major newspapers. They had even been mentioned by television talk show host Jay Leno (I've never seen his show).

Chapter Two explains how Dr. Pepperberg got interested in birds, and takes us through the definitely nonlinear path she took to becoming an avian language researcher (not the politically correct term for it). Chapter Three goes into detail about the early years and early research, taking care to be an easy read instead of some clinician's vocabulary test. In Chapter Four, Dr. Pepperberg mostly talks about her frustrating efforts to get published.

The next three chapters take us deeper into the research, revealing several gems along the way. It's probably here where the book seems to defy gravity. I kept telling myself I'd read "just a few more pages" and then put it down. And I'd put it down. But it wasn't long before I picked it up again to read "just a few more pages."

In Chapter Eight, Dr. Pepperberg is all done moving from lab to lab. She finds a home in Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where she is an associate research professor (she also teaches animal cognition at Harvard). Things appear to move rapidly, here. Alex, who had refused to participate with another bird (Griffin) in training at the previous location, suddenly decided to be mentor and teacher. Well, except for the fact that he played out a devious streak to keep the other bird keenly aware who was Number One. The story ends with this chapter, as it's here when Alex dies.

The final chapter is titled, "What Alex Taught Me." And, it makes a fitting end because it builds on the previous eight chapters and draws from other resources to give us a sense of perspective. Just as importantly, it helps us obtain an accurate and meaningful sense of exactly what Alex accomplished.

Back in September the world's most famous parrot, an African Grey named Alex, died. Alex had been the subject of one of the longest-running studies in animal cognition ever performed. Irene Pepperberg, the scientist who worked with Alex, demonstrated over the course of several decades that this bird was capable of startling feats of intelligence and reasoning. Alex could distinguish independently between concepts such as color, shape, size, and number. Given a selection of triangles, circles and rectangles of various colors and materials, Alex could answer complex questions such as "what shape is the red wood?" or "how many shapes are blue?" Dr. Pepperberg's work with Alex has become one of the most frequently cited and best-known experiments in animal-human communication.

All of which brings us to Dr. Pepperberg's new book, Alex & Me, a memoir of her thirty-some years working with Alex. This is a charming book. The story is amazing and often touching, and it's hard not to laugh at some of the anecdotes contained within. But it is ultimately marred by a lack of narrative depth.

Even Alex's most impressive moments are sketched out in dull declaratives that barely stimulate the imagination. These scenes have the potential to be so much more than what we see on the page. As it is, Dr. Pepperberg simply lists the various things that occurred, tosses in a cutesy interjection like "That's my Alex!" or "Smart bird!", and moves on. The stories are still great fun to read, though, simply because the events themselves, however presented, are so remarkable.

Pepperberg mentions many times the scientific objections that were raised to her work. Most frequent was the claim that Alex did not understand the reasoning behind his answers, that he simply relied on various verbal or nonverbal cues to pick the correct word. Pepperberg faced this criticism constantly, even when Alex's increasing abilities seemed too great to deny. When you read anecdotally of all the things that Alex accomplished, it seems amazing that these denials still persist.

Yet if this book is at all representative of Pepperberg's style of scientific argument, then I can sympathize at least partially with her critics. She has an unfortunate tendency to make strong statements without presenting any evidence or reasoning; and she will often assign motives or thoughts to her opponents without fully backing them up. She states that her difficulty in joining the faculty at the University of Arizona was due at least in part to "resentment" of Alex's increasing media profile. "Jealousy is corrosive," she notes. This seems rather likely, but it is for that very reason that I wonder why she could not provide even one piece of anecdotal evidence. This is a fairly serious charge to level against her academic colleagues and it would be unfair to do so speculatively.

In a similar vein, she tells of several instances when Alex was being obstinate and giving wrong answers delberately to amuse himself. I do not doubt for a moment that Pepperberg had good reason to believe that this was the case. But if so, I would have liked to hear more about her reasoning. What were those subtle cues, to which she had become so finely attuned, that tipped her off? We are not told, and so we are left noting how convenient it seems that whenever Alex gives a wrong answer, it's intentional.

Let me reemphasize that I am not trying to refute Dr. Pepperberg's studies. I mean simply to say that with a little more attentional to detail, she could have made her story so very much more convincing. I am and have long been an enthusiastic Alex fan, but again it is for this very reason that I wish Alex & Me were a more satisfying memoir. Those who have followed Alex over the years, though, will certainly find this book heartwarming and diverting.

Alex and Me, by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, is a bit of a patchwork quilt: part animal story, part memoir, part indictment of the scientific establishment, part animal science, and part philosophy. Happens that I like patchwork quilts, and I found much to like about Alex and Me.

My guess is that most people will pick up this book out of curiosity about Alex (ALEX is an acronym for Avian Language EXperiment), the African Gray parrot that astounded so many with his verbal skills and his problem solving capabilities. Alex and Me, though, is as the title suggests, about TWO entities, one avian, one human. The human side of the story is interesting in and of itself.

A substantial part of the book is Pepperberg's memoir. Tracing her interest in birds back to a lonely childhood in which her most constant companions were a series of parakeets, Pepperberg tells a thought-provoking story of what it was like to be female and intellectually gifted in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Blunt but not strident, Pepperberg clearly illustrates the obstacles that gender presented for her in academia. Though the 21st century has ushered in an era in which the majority of people attending college and earning advanced degrees are women, Pepperberg's story is one that is well to be aware of.

Another fascinating patch of this literary quilt is the clear-cut illustration of how near-sighted and biased the world of science can be. Scientists (and I am one), who pride themselves on being rational and unbiased, became deeply irrational and betrayed astounding bias when Pepperberg's research began to erode a wall that many hold to be sacred: the difference between one animal (human) and all others ("brutes", per Aristotle, and thousands of years of scientists and philosophers after him). Pepperberg found that she could not use the words animal and language in the same sentence, or animal and intelligence, if she was applying for the grants that were essential to fund her research. Why? Because the prevailing scientific assumption was that animals do not have language, and they don't have intelligence. How did scientists conclude that Alex could neither have language nor be intelligent? Because he was not human. Sound a bit circular in reasoning? You betcha. And woe to the scientist, especially a female scientist, that challenged those sacred assumptions.

Okay, fine, animal lovers may say, but what about ALEX? And yes, there is plenty in this book about the remarkable being called Alex. Alex, as the book frequently points out, had a brain about the size of a shelled walnut. With that brain he could recognize shapes, colors, and number of objects. He could add. Lest you should begin to worry about your job being outsourced to African Grays, his mathematical skills were limited to single digits, his vocabulary to less than two hundred words, and he had a distinct tendency to say "Wanna go back" whenever he got fatigued or bored. Your job is probably safe. All humor aside, what Pepperberg found in her studies of African Grays altered our understanding of avian intelligence and language skills forever, and irrevocably blurred the distinct boundaries that humans like to erect between themselves and "brute animals".

Pepperberg, as a child, received much solace from the company of her birds. Reading about Alex's range of emotional responses (no yelling here, but yes, animals DO have emotions), the reader will be one hard-hearted individual indeed if he or she can resist Alex's charm or be unaffected by the depth of the relationship that develops between Alex and Dr. Pepperberg.

The last chapter is a zinger. Alex may have been a brilliant parrot, but Pepperberg herself is no slouch as a human when it comes to the gray matter department. In concluding the book, Dr. Pepperberg gives a full-throated, skillful, and penetrating call to reevaluate the damage that the tenaciously held, but scientifically unsupportable, split between humans and all other animals has done to science and to our environment.

Patchwork quilts can be a bit on the raggedy side, and this book has a few ragged edges, a quality that doesn't diminish even one iota the value of what Alex and Me brings to the reader.

I have seen many birds in my life of 72 years, but this is the first time I could peek into what the little birds can do. Alex's cognitive ability and the way he learns not just by mimicking but applying the phrases he has heard to his own situation was really amazing to me. Dr. Pepperberg's patience in spite of huge hurdles, finally paid off. We have tendencies to judge everything through our experiences, not often ignoring or dismissing many facts and discoveries outside of our experiences. The book was truly entertaining as well as a huge discovery about something I have never really thought of. I recommend it to anyone.

Many years ago, when I was still a kid, I learned about a parrot named Alex who did more than just imitate words of his owner, he actually spoke and understood. I was fascinated by this bird and what he could do and that fascination never ended. When I saw that this book was coming out I couldn't wait to read it. The day before this book arrived I had started reading another biography (and that's really what this book is - a biography of Irene Pepperberg and Alex)and struggled with getting past the first chapter. The other biography was poorly written and boring. I wondered if this book would be the same. After all, the biography I was trying to read was written by a NY Times reporter and "Alex and Me" was written by a research scientist. I was pleasantly surprised. Within minutes of opening "Alex and Me" I was hooked! The story flowed in an organized manner with enough of a mix of layman science and funny anecdotes.

After quickly reading through the first chapter, I found myself transported through time to Irene's childhood and her first budgie. I was drawn into the story as Irene described high school and college and eventually chose her life of study with Alex. It was difficult to put the book down that night, even knowing I had to be up early the next day, I just couldn't stop reading. Every chance I got I was reading a little more. A lot of the book is about the studies done with Alex and his amazing abilities but it's also about the struggles Irene faced as a research scientist in a field not well accepted by her colleagues. I have to admit, I had tears in my eyes as I read the first chapter which describes the weeks following Alex's unexpected death and again in the second to last chapter as Irene learns that Alex had passed in the night. It is a beautifully told story that I think most people would enjoy.