Re: My bird ... has learned to communicate using human language

AN

As is my long-standing policy,

[Left: N'Kisi with owner-trainer, Aimée Morgana, BBC]

I am responding to your private message on an creation/evolution topic (namely whether a bird can talk in the same sense that humans do) to my blog CED, after removing your personal identifying information. Please don't interpret this as an invitation to debate-it isn't. After more than a decade (1994-2005) debating creation/evolution on the Internet, I ceased debating in order to write my blog and books.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 10:23 PM
Subject: Parrot Speech

>Dear Dr. Jones,

Thanks, but I am just plain Mr. Jones, BSc. (Biology).

>I was scanning information and came upon some comments you made in response to ape communicating through human language.

Presumably you mean "Re: Apes and Language," Stephen E. Jones, 29 Jul 1999, in which I quoted from an article that questioned of apes, "... whether they're understanding what they're doing ..." and pointed out, "if you look at their production of language, you'll find it's vastly different from the manner in which ... a child uses language" such that, "Were a four-year-old child to use language in the way a chimpanzee uses it, we would consider that child disturbed" (my emphasis):

"One bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), Kanzi, can use the system to say: `I want a cup of coffee, please'. Another, Panbanisha, is said to know around 3,000 words. ... But Dr Tom Sambrook, of the Scottish Primate Research Group, told BBC television of his doubts that the apes' achievements signified all they appeared to. `They can use language effectively to make requests', he said. `But whether they're understanding what they're doing is a much more difficult mystery to disentangle.' ... `But if you look at their production of language, you'll find it's vastly different from the manner in which, for example, a child uses language. Dr Sambrook quoted an earlier researcher's verdict: `Were a four-year-old child to use language in the way a chimpanzee uses it, we would consider that child disturbed.'" (Kirby, A., "Chimps' language skills in doubt," BBC, July 26, 1999).

and/or Re: Parrot cummunication [not my spelling], Stephen E. Jones, Mar 12 2000, in which I wrote, "My problem was the claim that animals can talk" and "A parrot might actually learn that the mimicked words `polly wants a cracker' ... in order to get food. But that does not mean that the parrot knows what the words actually mean. If it doesn't, then it is not talking as humans talk to each other" (my emphasis):

"I have no problem with `interspecies communication'. My problem was the claim that animals can talk. My cat meows for his food and I can understand what he is communicating. My wife claims he has different meows for different things, but I can't pick it. A parrot might actually learn that the mimicked words `polly wants a cracker' caused food to be offered and then says those words in order to get food. But that does not mean that the parrot knows what the words actually mean. If it doesn't, then it is not talking as humans talk to each other."

Earlier I had commented ("Re: Some Parrots Have Ability to Talk With Humans, etc," Stephen E. Jones, Mar 09 2000) on a no longer webbed article about Alex, another claimed "talking parrot," pointing out that "I saw a parrot sing `Happy Birthday' in an opera-singer voice at the Singapore bird park but I no one claimed that it knew what it was singing" (my emphasis) :

"This is a big problem for those who claim that chimps and gorillas can talk. If the claim is that chimps can really use sign language because they are closest to humans, then what is the explanation for a parrot who talk as well, if not better? I saw a parrot sing "Happy Birthday" in an opera-singer voice at the Singapore bird park but I no one claimed that it knew what it was singing. Parrots are just very clever mimics and human beings are very good at training them and reading into their pets' behaviour their own human feelings. Maybe this exposes as an anthropomorphic delusion the whole field of talking apes?"

>Are you interested in parrot communication?

Not very. As the above indicates, I am sceptical (to put it mildly) that "parrot communication" is the same thing as "talking as humans talk to each other" because the parrot does not know "what the words actually mean", as in that example of "a parrot sing `Happy Birthday' in an opera-singer voice at the Singapore bird park."

>I am an independent investigator working with a free-speaking macaw. My bird is not trained and has learned to communicate using human language (English). This experiment is unlike others because the bird communicates voluntarily.

I would say that your bird that "has learned to communicate using human language (English)"-like sounds, not "using human language" in the sense of "talking as humans talk to each other."

[Right: Blue-and-yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna), Jurong Bird Park, Singapore, Wikipedia]

That parrot at Singapore's Jurong bird park in 1996 was also a macaw (perhaps the very same one in the photo) and it had "learned to communicate using human language (English)"-like sounds in singing "Happy Birthday," was so convincing that if anyone heard it without seeing, or knowing, that it was being sung by a parrot, they would probably assume it was a human being thinkingly singing "Happy Birthday" to another human, instead of a bird unthinkingly making a learned sequence of human language-like sounds in response to its keeper's trained cues.

According to Wikipedia, macaws "are monogamous and ... In captivity unmated macaws will bond primarily with one person - their keeper" with whom "Pet macaws thrive on frequent interaction":

"Macaws ... Birds in captivity Macaws eat nuts and fruit. They also gnaw and chew on various objects. They show a large amount of intelligence in their behaviour and require constant intellectual stimulation to satisfy their innate curiosity. Bonding: Macaws have been said to live for up to 100 years; however, an average of 50 years is probably more accurate. The larger macaws may live up to 65 years. They are monogamous and mate for life. In captivity unmated macaws will bond primarily with one person ? their keeper. Pet macaws thrive on frequent interaction, and a lack of this can lead to their mental and physical suffering. Other sub-bondings also take place and most macaws that are subjected to non-aggressive behavior will trust most humans, and can be handled even by strangers if someone familiar is also alongside. Captive pet macaws sometimes display difficult behavior, the most common being biting, screaming, and feather-plucking. Feather-plucking does not normally occur in the wild, strongly suggesting that it is the result of a neurosis related to life in captivity. Most pet macaws had ancestors living in the wild just two or three generations ago, and are not truly domesticated by any reasonable definition. (This is unlike, for example, dogs; some estimates put the domestication of dogs as far back as 40,000 years ago.) All species of macaws have very powerful, large beaks and are capable of causing considerable harm to both children and adults. They tend to be extremely loud: their voices are designed to carry over long distances. This makes macaws very demanding birds to keep as a household pet. Additional complications arise from the intelligence levels of macaws and their negative responses to stimuli people generally use on domestic pets."

This, combined with "the intelligence levels of macaws" and their ability (like many, if not most parrots') to mimic sounds (including human language sounds), adequately explains why they can give a very convincing imitation of their keeper's human language.

>Unlike N'kisi, I have had no luck with mental communication, and I am extremely skeptical of psychic communicators.

Here is an article on N'Kisi's claimed "mental communication"

[Left: "African gray parrot," Wikipedia]

"N'Kisi may look like an ordinary Congo African gray parrot, but she's the subject of a series of telepathy experiments by a former Cambridge University researcher who says the results are "astounding." "The parrot seems to be able to pick up her owner's thoughts with an amazing degree of accuracy," says Rupert Sheldrake, a former Royal Society researcher at Cambridge and author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals. N'Kisi's owner, Aimee Morgana of Manhattan, read Sheldrake's 1999 book and contacted him through his Web site (www.sheldrake.org). Morgana, 42, a production designer ... thought Sheldrake might be interested in her parrot. "I thought, 'Gee, if he thinks a dog waiting by the door is interesting, wait till he hears about this.' " She says she first noticed N'Kisi's psychic abilities when she saw an explicit picture in the Village Voice personals. "I was thinking, 'Wow, that's a pretty naturalistic work.' " Then, she says, N'Kisi spoke from the parrot's cage across the room: "Oh, look at the pretty naked body." Sheldrake was interested. He explored N'Kisi's psychic abilities using a double-blind test. He asked Morgana to look at photographs in one room while the parrot was in a cage in another. One camera videotaped Morgana looking at photographs, another camera about 55 feet away videotaped the parrot, who made comments that seemed to correspond to many of the photos Morgana was looking at. In one taped session, for example, Morgana is examining a photo of a woman embracing a man when N'Kisi, who was upstairs in her cage and could not see the photograph Morgana was holding in her hand, calls out: "Can I give you a hug?" According to Sheldrake, N'Kisi made 123 comments during the test sessions, and 32 of those were "direct hits" corresponding to the images Morgana was looking at. The chances of that occurring, Sheldrake says, are less than 1 in a billion. Telepathy is made possible, he says, by the emotional bonds between people and animals. "In the case of N'Kisi, there's a very strong connection between her and Aimee." Morgana spends roughly six hours a day teaching N'Kisi vocabulary words by using a children's touch-tone telephone and other toys, and has transcribed the parrot's vocabulary of 560 words into an electronic log. Sheldrake presented preliminary findings on N'Kisi in November at Cambridge University's Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine. "The general reception here is he made a well-organized and sensible presentation and reported on work that looks to be competent. He seems to have done a good job," says Donald Broom, a professor of animal welfare at the university. "That's not to say everybody will be completely convinced by it. It's reasonable to be more critical when it's a more unusual result, shall we say." So it's no surprise that the N'Kisi Project, as it's known on Sheldrake's Web site, has been met with skepticism among some scientists." (McKelvey, T., " 'Psychic' parrot expected to ruffle scientific feathers, USA Today, February 12, 2001).

Yet, to me (and I am sure most outside observers) this seems to be just an extension of the same Clever Hans selection effect of humans anthropomorphically reading into animal behaviour, human thoughts and words.

Note that "N'Kisi made 123 comments during the test sessions, and" only "32 of those were `direct hits' corresponding to the images Morgana was looking at" and that with unconsciously giving it the benefit of the doubt (since Morgana and Sheldrake wanted it to be true).

Also note that "Morgana spends roughly six hours a day teaching N'Kisi vocabulary words" and yet it only has a "vocabulary of 560 words" (my emphasis). Yet according to Wikipedia, "a 5-year-old native English speaker" about the same age as N'Kisi was, "knows about 4,000 to 5,000 word families" and "would add roughly 1000 new word families every year to their vocabulary" (my emphasis):

"Vocabulary ... Jean Aitchison gives the capacity of the vocabulary of college graduates with Bachelor of Education degrees as an estimate of at least 50,000, where a word is defined as a lexeme or dictionary entry, i.e., sing, sings, sang, sung count as one entry sing ... According to Robert Waring, a 5-year-old native English speaker knows about 4,000 to 5,000 word families. They would add roughly 1000 new word families every year to their vocabulary. A university graduate will have a vocabulary of around 20,000 word families, in which tolerate, tolerance, intolerable, and toleration are considered as one word family..."

So clearly on the evidence, what these birds are doing is not the same thing as human language acquisition, therefore it is not human language they are speaking, but just imitating human sounds (as they would imitate other birds' sounds) that they have associated with their trainer's audio- visual and behavioural cues, without truly understanding what those sounds mean.

It is the same with my golden retriever dog. She `knows' words like "sit," "walk," "picnic" (for "eat your food"), "swim," etc. No doubt if I was willing to spend "six hours a day" I could teach her to bark the sounds and then I could claim she was `talking'! But I do not imagine that she understands what the words mean. To her they are just sounds that trigger an association with a stimulus.

And so I assume it is the same with your macaw and the other parrots (and apes).

>Yet, I do share a common problem with other audible communicative studies (also signs used by apes): the insensitivity and lack of receptivity of people to sounds they do not immediately understand.
>
>Please comment about the previous topics. Thank you.

See above. The bottom line is that I, like leading linguist Noam Chomsky, am "highly skeptical" of all these claims of birds (and other animals) speaking (or signing) human language, regarding them all as "merely operant conditioning":

"Alex is an African grey parrot. Since 1977 he has been the subject of a running experiment under animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and currently at Brandeis University. Alex had a vocabulary of around 100 words as of 2000, but is exceptional in that he appears to have understanding of what he says. For example, when Alex is shown an object and is asked about its shape, color, or material, he can label it correctly. If asked the difference between two objects, he will also answer that, but if there is no difference between the objects, he will say `none.' When he is tired of being tested, he will say `I'm gonna go away,' and if the researcher displays annoyance, Alex tries to defuse it with the phrase, `I'm sorry.' If he says `Wanna banana', but is offered a nut instead, he will stare in silence, ask for the banana again, or take the nut and throw it at the researcher. When asked how many objects of a particular color or a particular material are on a tray, he gives the correct answer approximately 80% of the time. ... Although Alex shows understanding of what he says, skeptics question whether he is using language. ... Parrots are highly social birds, and it seems likely that when humans are their companions, they attempt to use the communication system of those humans (language). ... Some in the scientific community, notably Noam Chomsky, are highly skeptical of Pepperberg's findings, pointing to Alex's alleged use of language as merely operant conditioning."

>Sincerely,
>
>AN
>[...]

By the way, I don't in any way mean to belittle the love you obviously have for your macaw (nor its love for you). I love my dog and my cat very much (although only the dog really reciprocates!) and when my former cat was run over by a car a few years ago and I had to tell the veterinarian to put him down to end his suffering, I was devastated and cried uncontrollably. But they don't need to be or so something that they are not (e.g. be human, or speak human language) for me to love them as they are.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc (Biol).

---

Genesis 50:22-26. ²²Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his father's family. He lived a hundred and ten years ²³and saw the third generation of Ephraim's children. Also the children of Makir son of Manasseh were placed at birth on Joseph's knees. ²⁴Then Joseph said to his brothers, "I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." ²⁵And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath and said, "God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place." ²⁶So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.