Irene Pepperberg and Alex

Greetings everyone!

So yesterday, I witnessed something truly amazing on the WOSU. The program on NOVA ScienceNow started out talking about somebody named Alex. My first thoughts were: Who is Alex? And why do people keep on referring to him only by his first name? As the program went on, one interviewee compared Alex to Albert Einstein and another compared his death to the King of Pop’s death; however she felt more emotional attached to Alex. I immediately thought to myself, “Why had I not heard of Alex, especially if his death was being compared to one of my all-time favorite artists?” 

Well, my lack of knowledge regarding Alex was perhaps due to  me being focused on my school work and the absence of Alex on the type of programming I often watched. Alex was a well-known parrot, who was taught to speak and increase his animal intelligence by Irene Pepperberg.  Irene conducted a study on Alex, which displayed that animals could be taught to communicate with people.  Her inspiration came from watching a TV program where a man taught a chimpanzee how to communicate through sign language. After seeing such a wonderful thing take place, Irene changed her major from Chemistry to Biology and enrolled at Purdue. She set out to do the same thing that she had seen on T.V.; train an animal how to communicate with others.  Though Irene did not get very much buy-in during the beginning phases, she did not let that deter her from her study. 

Within 30 years of Irene working with Alex, she was able to teach him colors, shapes, sizes and how to explain to others what he wanted.  She defied the odds and helped man communicate with parrots. You could say that she is the Dr. Dolittle of parrots; she taught Alex over 100 words, provided a strategy on teaching parrots to communicate and continues to teacher other parrots today.

Thanks Irene for your continued dedication and seeing the possibilities in the often peculiar!

 

 

 

 

Remembering Whitney

As a child, I grew up listening to all types of music.  My mother's 8-track/record player blared out the smooth sounds of Luther Vandross, while my sister's radio played the sweet sounds of Soul II Soul.  I, a Millennial or Gen Y child, learned to appreciate the various musical talents of those who sang so beautifully on my mother and sister's sound systems.  Some of these artists included greats such as Michael Jackson, Teddy Pendegrass, and of course Whitney Houston.  There was something about Whitney's voice that entered into my spirit so easily.  It was as if a piece of me was missing that I did not realize until she sang her beautiful songs.  Though I was not at the age in which I could relate to the songs on a personal level, I knew that something inside of me wanted to understand the feelings involved in those songs.  I wanted someone to run to and love me.  I wanted to feel The Greatest Love of All because I was the future.  I wanted someone to always love.  I wanted to feel just as Whitney did as she creatively exposed her talents to catchy rhythmic tunes.

Whitney, thank you so much for giving us a piece of you.  We all know that life comes with many temptations; therefore we refrain from judging you on life's lessons that we may or may not have had the privilege of understanding.  Judging others is the easy part.  The hard part is accepting people for their downfall and moving forward in helping them overcome their situation.  We love you and will miss your lovely voice.