Excellent story about Alex, an African Grey parrot who learned to think, conceptualize, categorize and draw his own conclusions to his environment from his work with his scientist colleague, Irene Pepperberg. Irene could never quite accept that Alex could draw his own conclusions though over their 30 years of working in various labs around the country together he demonstrated it many times. Maintaining a clearly clinical relationship for their 30 years but at Alex's death it occurred to Irene that she loved him and he was her friend. She couldn't get past the concept of a parrot's brain being the size of a walnut but if only she had realized the phenomenal amount of information that was stored in that exceptional brain she might have had a more enjoyable relationship with him as communicating with a different but certainly intelligent species. I would have liked to see the book go further and had she pursued conversation instead of variations of concepts (colors, numbers, shapes) she might have found out there was way more to Alex than she had imagined. I enjoyed the book, just wish she could have lighteend up and let her guard down a little. Alex was so smart like when she was trying to get him to do those tired old exercises again and again to show would be donors his "skills" and Alex kept asking her for a nut but she blew him off each time. Finally he said to her, "
- Shirley J.
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