Quote:
Originally Posted by 3894
Researcher Irene Pepperberg has done a lot of linguistic work with her African grey Alex. Pepperberg found that Alex was as intelligent as a dolphin or great ape and had a vocab of about 150 words.
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I will say up front that I know nothing of this particular bird. Also, I will say that the African Greys are quite intelligent. However, there is a lot of doubt over whether they are speaking the words as part of an intelligent conversation or if they are just trained to mimic specific sounds upon earing specific sounds. For example, while a dog may be trained to perform a specific act upon hearing a certain word, the actual word is irrelevant and is typically used for the ease of the trainer. While the dog may roll over when the trainer says "roll over" the dog could be just as easily trained to roll over when the trainer said "cucumber."