More than just a talking parrot
I thought this was a fascinating article - it’s about a 29 year old parrot (yes, a parrot!) that can count, distinguish colour, apparently understand basic English and understands the concept of “zero” or “none”.
Basically, they can get Alex (the parrot - cute little fella!) to look at a number of coloured blocks. Then, they ask him “What colour three?”, for example, meaning “There are three of which coloured blocks?” Alex can then answer with a colour, or with “None.” if there aren’t any blocks with three colours.
What makes this so astounding is that the idea of “none” or “zero” is a very complex concept. Children need to be at least a couple of years old to understand it. (Interestingly (and mathematicians correct me if I’m wrong!) it was a relatively significant advancement of mathematics to include the concept of zero. I can’t remember the details though. Brett?) The parrot had learned the concept of “none” from a there is/there isn’t context, rather than counting, and it was discovered quite by accident that Alex the Parrot could apply it to counting as well!
I tried to find the original paper, but couldn’t (anyone?). However, the work was done by the Alex Foundation, and it has some interesting links to their prior research and techniques. It really is fascinating how a creature with a brain that small (no offence - just the facts!) can have such relatively complex thought processes. Interestingly, the way they taught the parrot these concepts is being applied to children with learning disabilities as well (in a modified form, one presumes!) So this research might end up being even more beneficial than expected.
With regards to zero, I think there was always a concept of emptiness or “nothing”, but to identify that as a number was a big leap. There’s certainly a bunch of intuitive, mathematical and philosophical questions you have to deal with if you want to understand zero (or, alternatively, there are a lot of questions that you try to ignore when you want to use zero
). The most common problem is that when you let zero into your number system, it messes up your idea of division. Zero won’t let you define a nicely uniform division approach (you always have to say, “x/y, assuming y is not zero”). And it also messes up powers (quick, what’s 0^0?) as well as roots (what’s the zeroth root of 2?).
As always, the Wikipedia has a good article on zero. Another article,/a> this time at St Andrews, is also worth looking at. Charles Feife has also recently written a whole book on zero. (Many people have recommended it)
That parrot must be darn smart to have known all of this.