Alex the Genius Parrot

For parrots in the wild, please check out Alex was an African grey parrot working with Dr. Irene Pepperberg to prove how smart birds can be. She wrote that Alex’s intelligence was on a level similar to dolphins and great apes. Alex had a vocabulary of over 100 words, and understood their meaning. He could identify 50 different objects and recognize quantities up to six; that he could distinguish seven colors and five shapes, and understand the concepts of “bigger“, “smaller“, “same“, and “different“. He also understood the concept of nothing or zero, replying “none“ when appropriate. He was an Einstein of birds, and a remarkable proof of animal intelligence. RIP, little fella.