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Matches in DBpedia 2015-10 for { ?s ?p "Alex (1976 – September 6, 2007) was an African grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year (1977–2007) experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When he asked what color he was, he became the first and only non-human animal to have ever asked an existential question.When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. The name "Alex" was an acronym for avian language experiment, but Pepperberg later cited the name as meaning avian learning experiment to evoke further acceptance in her research field, a then-touchy topic (explained in her book, Alex & Me).Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent as their only common use of communication was of mimicking and the repetition of sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively. Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a par with that of dolphins and great apes. She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human, in some respects, and had not even reached his full potential by the time he died. She said that the bird had the emotional level of a human two-year-old at the time of his death."@en }

• Alex_(parrot) abstract "Alex (1976 – September 6, 2007) was an African grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year (1977–2007) experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When he asked what color he was, he became the first and only non-human animal to have ever asked an existential question.When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. The name "Alex" was an acronym for avian language experiment, but Pepperberg later cited the name as meaning avian learning experiment to evoke further acceptance in her research field, a then-touchy topic (explained in her book, Alex & Me).Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent as their only common use of communication was of mimicking and the repetition of sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively. Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a par with that of dolphins and great apes. She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human, in some respects, and had not even reached his full potential by the time he died. She said that the bird had the emotional level of a human two-year-old at the time of his death.".