National Geographic

BIRD BRAINIACS 115``````Recognizing Faces,QZLOGOLIHELRORJLVW-RKQ0DU]OXƂDQGRQHRIKLVVWXGHQWVDWWKH8QLYHUVLW\RI:DVKLQJWRQLQ6HDWWOHGRQQHGPDVNVOLNHWKLVDQGFDSWXUHGDQGEDQGHGVHYHQFURZV7RGD\LI0DU]OXƂRUDQRWKHUSHUVRQSXWVRQWKHPDVNWKHFURZVLQWKHDUHDŞQRWMXVWWKHRULJLQDOVHYHQŞJDWKHUWRVFROGGLYHERPEDQGIROORZKLP7KHFURZVGRQŠWSHVWHUSHRSOHZHDULQJRWKHUPDVNVwith an uncanny ability to distinguish humanfaces and expressions, letters of the alphabet,even paintings by Monet and Picasso. Other re-searchers revealed the remarkable memories ofClark’s nutcrackers, scrub jays, and chickadees.Nutcrackers, for example, harvest and cachemore than 30,000 pine seeds every autumn, dis-tributing them in several thousand tiny cachesthey need to remember through the winter.IN THE 1950S, researchers began studying howsongbirds such as canaries, sparrows, and zebrafinches learn their songs. They found strikingsimilarities between birdsong and human speech.And then there was Alex, an African gray parrotwhom comparative psychologist Irene Pepperbergtaught to reproduce English sounds (Pepper-berg emphasizes that Alex did not actually learnthe English language). By the time of his death in2007 at age 31, Alex had mastered roughly a hun-dred English sounds for colors, objects, numbers,and shapes. He could clearly pronounce “green,”“yellow,” “wool,” “wood,” “walnut,” and “banana,”and used these sounds to communicate with peo-ple. He understood “same” and “different,” couldcount to eight, and grasped the abstract conceptof zero, or “none,” as he called it. Alex used histalent to talk back, telling Pepperberg to “calmdown” when she was in a bad mood, and askingto “go back” when he yearned for his home duringan illness that kept him at the vet’s. And he alwayswished her a good night, as he did just before hedied. “You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you.”Yet because scientists misunderstood the avianbrain, most of Pepperberg’s discoveries about Alexwere ignored or mocked; she feared that other re-searchers thought she was somehow giving Alexclues. “His brain was the size of a shelled walnut,”Pepperberg concedes, “so some people thoughtI was making it all up or that he was cheating.”(Pepperberg videotaped many experiments withAlex.) Of course, a cheating bird would also be anintelligent bird, but the upshot was simply thatfew scientists in cognition research recognizedAlex’s achievements—until a couple of yearsbefore he died. Alex’s ability to imitate language—and apparently to use English words in the correctcontext—has spurred studies of parrots to betterunderstand the origins of vocal learning, which isthe ability to imitate purposeful sounds. This is askill parrots share with songbirds, hummingbirds,humans, cetaceans, and a few other species.The discoveries finally led an internation-al team of researchers to reexamine the long-standing Edinger model of avian neural anatomy.In 2005 they issued their reevaluation, revealingthat birds’ brains do possess neural structures,called the pallium, that resemble the mammali-an neocortex and other areas associated with so-phisticated thinking. They supported adopting anew nomenclature and understanding of birds’neural anatomy.“The parts of birds’ and mammals’ brains arearranged differently,” explains Nicola Clayton, apsychologist at the University of Cambridge, inthe United Kingdom, who studies corvid cogni-tion. “Mammals’ brains are layered like a clubsandwich, while birds’ brains are more like a