Irene Pepperberg's African Grey, Griffin Kicks Harvard Students Butts In Memory Test

It worked like this: Tiny colored pom-poms were covered with cups and then shuffled, so participants had to track which object was under which cup. The experimenter then showed them a pom-pom that matched one of the same color hidden under one of the cups and asked them to point at the cup. (Griffin, of course, used his beak to point.) The participants were tested on tracking two, three, and four different-colored pom-poms. The position of the cups were swapped zero to four times for each of those combinations. Griffin and the students did 120 trials; the children did 36.

The game tests the brain’s ability to retain memory of items that are no longer in view, and then updating when faced with new information, like a change in location. This cognitive system is known as visual working memory and is the one of the foundations for intelligent behavior.

So how did the parrot fare? Griffin outperformed the 6- to 8-year-olds across all levels on average, and he performed either as well as or slightly better than the 21 Harvard undergraduates on 12 of the 14 of trial types.

That’s not bad at all for a so-called bird brain.

“Think about it: Grey parrot outperforms Harvard undergrads. That’s pretty freaking awesome,” said Hrag Pailian, the postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who led the experiment. “We had students concentrating in engineering, pre-meds, this, that, seniors, and he just kicked their butts.”

Full disclosure: Griffin has been the star of past cognitive studies, like showing he’s smarter than the typical 4-year-old and as intelligent as a 6- to 8-year-old child. But making Harvard students do a double take on their own intelligence is quite the step up.

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Soon after I started this blog, Irene Pepperberg's book Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence-and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process came out. Her relationship with Alex taught me what I was feeling, my emotions and bond with Max was special, non-transcendental, and more than love. And I wasn't alone.

Sadly, no one was interested in my zest and fascination for the beauty of these bonds.

You be good. I love you.

Those were Alex's last words to Irene. Those words still haunt me and bring tears to my eyes. Those tears and the pure beauty of these bonds keep me alive to give voice to all the animal sufferings.

I like to think of Alex, Marley, Max, and others are ambassadors to change human behavior and minds. I am honored to have lived my life with one of these ambassadors and I owe them the rest of my life.


And Irene went through a lot in this biased world...

I was uncovering cognitive abilities in Alex that no one believed were possible, and challenging science’s deepest assumptions about the origin of human cognitive abilities. And yet I was without a job. I was also without a grant. I had to apply for unemployment insurance. I ate fourteen tofu meals a week, and I kept my thermostat at 57 degrees during the winter to minimize household expenses.