Alex the African Grey
Science's best known parrot died on September 6th, aged 31
科学界最有名的鹦鹉于
THE last time Irene Pepperberg saw Alex she said goodnight as usual. “You be good,” said Alex. “I love you.” “I love you, too.” “You'll be in tomorrow?” “Yes, I'll be in tomorrow.” But Alex (his name supposedly an acronym of Avian Learning Experiment) died in his cage that night, bringing to an end a life spent learning complex tasks that, it had been originally thought, only primates could master.
艾琳·佩珀伯格博士最后一次看到亚历克斯时，同往常一样向它道了晚安。
“你真好，” 亚历克斯说，“我爱你。”
“我也爱你！”
“你明天能来么？”
“当然，我明天会来的。”
但是就在那天晚上，亚历克斯在它的笼子里悄然而去，为他忙于复杂的学习任务的一生划上了休止符。人们原本认为，只有灵长类动物才能熟练掌握复杂的学习任务。
In science as in most fields of endeavour, it is important to have the right tool for the job. Early studies of linguistic ability in apes concluded it was virtually non-existent. But researchers had made the elementary error of trying to teach their anthropoid subjects to speak. Chimpanzee vocal cords are simply not up to this—and it was not until someone had the idea of teaching chimps sign language that any progress was made.
自 然科学领域如同大多数需要全力以赴的领域一样，拥有合适的工具非常重要。早期有关猿类语言能力的研究得出的结论是猿类几乎不存在语言能力。但是研究人员在 尝试教授类人猿说话时，却犯了最基本的错误。因为黑猩猩的声带几乎无法自如发声——直到有人主张教大猩猩用手语说话才取得了一定成绩。
Even then, the researchers remained human-centric. Their assumption was that chimps might be able to understand and use human sign language because they are humanity's nearest living relatives. It took a brilliant insight to turn this human-centricity on its head and look at the capabilities of a species only distantly related to humanity, but which can, nevertheless, speak the words people speak: a parrot.
即使如此，研究人员仍然是以人类自我为中心的。他们想当然认为黑猩猩之所以能理解与运用人类语言，是因为他们和人类有着最近的亲缘关系。要将这一以人类为中心的观念颠覆、转而研究一种与人类没有多大关系但却可以讲人类语言的的物种鹦鹉，没有非凡的洞察力不可能实现。
The insight in question came to Dr Pepperberg, then a 28-year-old theoretical chemist, in 1977. To follow it up, she bought a one-year-old African Grey parrot at random from a pet shop. Thus began one of the best-known double acts in the field of animal-behaviour science.
佩珀伯格博士具有这种洞察力，1977年的她还是个28岁的理论化学家。怀着探究到底的心理，她随意从一家宠物店买回来一只一岁的非洲灰鹦鹉。从此，动物行为学领域最著名的一对搭档出现了。
Dr Pepperberg and Alex last shared a common ancestor more than
Bird brained禽鸟的思维
Dr Pepperberg's reason for suspecting that they might—and thus her second reason for picking a parrot—was that in the mid-1970s evolutionary explanations for behaviour were coming back into vogue. A British researcher called Nicholas Humphrey had proposed that intelligence evolves in response to the social environment rather than the natural one. The more complex the society an animal lives in, the more wits it needs to prosper.
1970年代中期，用演化轮来解释行为的做法重新流行起来，佩珀伯格博士因此怀疑鹦鹉能理解它所说的话，这也是她挑选鹦鹉的第二原因。一位名叫Nicholas Humphrey英国研究人员声称智力的发展更多地来源于对社会环境的回应，而非自然界。生物所生存的社会环境越复杂，其繁衍需要的智慧就会越多。
The reason why primates are intelligent, according to Dr Humphrey, is that they generally live in groups. And, just as group living promotes intelligence, so intelligence allows larger groups to function, providing a spur for the evolution of yet more intelligence. If Dr Humphrey is right, only social animals can be intelligent—and so far he has been borne out.
依照Humphrey博士的说法，灵长目动物聪明的原因在于它们通常群居生活。并且，正如群居生活能提高智力一样，智力允许更大的种群保持正常运转，并为更大的智力进化提供推动力。如果Humphrey博士是正确的，就只有社会性动物才会有智慧——现在已证明他是正确的。
Flocks of, say, starlings or herds of wildebeest do not count as real societies. They are just protective agglomerations in which individuals do not have complex social relations with each other. But parrots such as Alex live in societies in the wild, in the way that monkeys and apes do, and thus Dr Pepperberg reasoned, Alex might have evolved advanced cognitive abilities. Also like primates, parrots live long enough to make the time-consuming process of learning worthwhile. Combined with his ability to speak (or at least “vocalise”) words, Alex looked a promising experimental subject.
成 群居住的星椋鸟或者角马不能认为具有真正的社会性。它们只是出于保护的目的聚集在一起，个体与个体之间没有复杂的社会关系。但是，鹦鹉在野外住居于社群 中，类似于猴子或者猿，因而佩珀伯格颇有道理地得出结论，诸如亚历克斯这样的生物可能已经演化出先进的认知能力。象别的灵长目动物一样，鹦鹉的寿命很长， 值得去做那些耗费时间的学习进程。结合她说话的能力(或者至少是“发音”)，亚历克斯看起来是一个很有希望的实验课题。
And so it proved. Using a training technique now employed on children with learning difficulties, in which two adults handle and discuss an object, sometimes making deliberate mistakes, Dr Pepperberg and her collaborators at the
结果证明它不负重望。通过使用一项现在应用于有学习障碍的儿童身上的培训技术，让两个成年人操纵并讨论某个对象，有时故意制造错误，佩珀伯格博士和她的合作者在亚利桑那州大学开始教授亚历克斯如何辨认物体，如何表达他的欲求甚至如何发问。
By the end, said Dr Pepperberg, Alex had the intelligence of a five-year-old child and had not reached his full potential. He had a vocabulary of 150 words. He knew the names of 50 objects and could, in addition, describe their colours, shapes and the materials they were made from. He could answer questions about objects' properties, even when he had not seen that particular combination of properties before. He could ask for things—and would reject a proffered item and ask again if it was not what he wanted. He understood, and could discuss, the concepts of “bigger”, “smaller”, “same” and “different”. And he could count up to six, including the number zero (and was grappling with the concept of “seven” when he died). He even knew when and how to apologise if he annoyed Dr Pepperberg or her collaborators.
最后，佩珀伯格博士说，亚历克斯最终拥有了相当于5岁儿童的智力，并还有可能进一步提高。他拥有150个单词的词汇量。他知道50种 物体的名字，除此之外他还能描述它们的颜色、形状以及其构成材料。他能回答有关物体性质的问题，甚至那些他从来没有见过的结合性能。他知道要求一些东西 ——如果提供的物品不是他想要的，他会拒绝并再次要求。他能理解并讨论“稍大”“稍小”“不同”等概念。包括零在内，他能一直数到6(当他离去的时候正在设法学会7的概念)。如果他把佩珀伯格博士和他的合作者惹烦了，他甚至知道该在什么时候以及如何道歉。
And the fact that there were a lot of collaborators, even strangers, involved in the project was crucial. Researchers in this area live in perpetual fear of the “Clever Hans” effect. This is named after a horse that seemed to count, but was actually reacting to unconscious cues from his trainer. Alex would talk to and perform for anyone, not just Dr Pepperberg.
有大量的合作者，甚至陌生人参与了这项实验，这个因素至关重要。此领域的研究人员处于“聪明汉斯”效应的永久恐惧之下。这个效应得名于一匹似乎刚学会数数的马，但是实际上它对训练者的提示毫无意识。亚历克斯可以和任何人交谈、表演，而非仅仅佩珀伯格博士。
There are still a few researchers who think Alex's skills were the result of rote learning rather than abstract thought. Alex, though, convinced most in the field that birds as well as mammals can evolve complex and sophisticated cognition, and communicate the results to others. A shame, then, that he is now, in the words of Monty Python, an ex-parrot.
没有评论:
发表评论