What started off as a mild interest in the African Grey Parrot has turned to fear. These things are, perhaps, a little too smart. What’s worse is that when they get angry, they get even smarter.
Alex, a 28 year old African Grey, figured out the concept of zero, something humans didn’t figure out until about 500 B.C. Alex’s revelation came after a two week protest, during which he refused to participate in experiments or purposely screwed them up because he was bored with his rewards.
“He seemed to enjoy the experimenters’ frustrated reactions,” the researchers said. “We cannot determine what cognitive process led to this behavior. We suggest only that his action, occurring soon after a period of noncompliance, resulted from a lack of interest in the given task and was a possible attempt to make the procedure more challenging.”
If he knows zero and he knows one, how much longer before he figures out binary? And then what? We’re all doomed, that’s what. It’ll be a cyberspace version of The Birds.
