According to Irene Pepperberg, there's more to birds than we think.
She calls herself an ethologist, but uses comparative psychology to carry
out her studies. As hundreds of published interviews and papers suggest, she
has achieved an unprecedented understanding of the cognitive and communicative
abilities of African gray parrots.
"What we do," she explains, "is train them to communicate with us, using
the sound of English speech. Then, we use communication code to help examine
their cognition." A disruptive little parrot named Wart gurgles in the background
as Pepperberg speaks. "Wart, you can't eat my hand," she scolds.
A doctoral degree in theoretical chemistry taught Pepperberg how to think.
But an itching desire to answer the question, "Why do birds sing?" drove her
to go straight to the source to find out.
Television portrayals of animal researchers have always bothered Pepperberg.
In the past, says Pepperberg, televised studies on animal behavior typically
showed the researcher shooting darts at an animal or wrestling it to the ground.
This, she says, is an irresponsibly false depiction of how we actually study
animals.
In 1974, a new TV series promised to alter public perception of animal
research techniques. "Here were these wonderful NOVA programs that were actually
showing real ways that researchers study animals. I was fascinated by the
studies on signing chimps and the work that was being done on communication
with dolphins," she remembers.
During that time, Pepperberg perceived a communicative ability in birds
that had been ignored by researchers. She thought, "There's something
to this, and nobody's looking at birds the way people are looking at
chimps. But these parrots can produce speech. There must be something there!"
As Wart grabs hold of her ring, Pepperberg describes the results of her
hard work. Alex is the oldest African gray parrot that she has trained. He's
been an attentive pupil, though talkative at times.
"He's learned to identify about 50 different objects. He knows seven
different colors. He knows five shapes. He knows quantities to six. He has
concepts of categories. He knows concepts of bigger and smaller, of same and
different, of absence of information."
With this combination of cognitive and communicative abilities, explains
Pepperberg, Alex can interact with humans and express himself. "He combines
these labels to identify, request, refuse, and categorize more than 100 different
things."
Pepperberg describes her work as "fascinating." However, she admits that
there are drawbacks to the path she's taken. Sometimes, she says, it's
just plain exhausting. "I have been in more places than many people and yet,
at this point you look at it and go, 'Jet lag. Weird food. Being tired.'
You stop looking at it from the positive because it's overload."
When all is said and done, the rewards of an original discovery make it
all worthwhile for Pepperberg. "I tell my students that the excitement is
when you've learned something that nobody else in the world knows. When
you've designed this experiment and you've been really careful.
And you got it right. And now you know something. There's that moment
when you found something that nobody else in the world knows. It's an
incredible high."
Throughout the course of his long career, professor Rod Wong has concentrated
on several phases of research. "I did work on activity wheel running in rats
[as a means of testing drugs and hormones], frustration and effects on rat
behavior, early stimulation of rat pups and effects on learning."
The rewards and learning curves of lab work, says Wong, are tremendous.
"Writing it up for a publication is like telling a story about an attempt
to understand what's going on and why."
There are very few individuals who can earn a living by doing nothing else
but studying animals, says Wong. "Like most academics," he says, "my time
was distributed between research, teaching and administration." In other words,
comparative psychologists rarely find the funding to make a living out of
research alone.
Pepperberg agrees. It is tough work trying to make a living in this field.
"I tend to work 13-hour days, six days a week. There's relatively little
grant money, there are a lot of people competing for this grant money, so
there's a lot of stress there." Not only is the funding scarce, explains
Pepperberg, but there just aren't many jobs out there for comparative
psychologists.
"Go into it because you love the work -- and not for any
other reason. That's what's going to carry you through, because
it's hard work and you have to really love it."