January 24, 2011--Clever Hans, Alex, Carmelita, Chaser, and Rona’s Goldfish

My first encounter with animal intelligence was a story I heard about Clever Hans, a German horse who was able to tap out answers to arithmetic problems with his right fore hoof. It was said that he could subtract 6 from 10, tapping the ground 4 times before proudly stopping, or add 3 plus 4. I’m not sure how well he did when it came to long division.

I never saw Clever Hans in person, he was around in the early 1900s, but there were other horses that did their thing at the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and, if I am remembering correctly, on the old Ed Sullivan Show. I could be imagining that but Ed did feature novelty acts such as Topo Gigio and Señor Wences, respectively a foam rubber hand-puppet mouse with goo-goo eyes and a childish personality and a ventriloquist whose stable of characters included Johnny, a face drawn with lipstick on Wences' hand, which he would place atop an otherwise headless doll. And so a hoof-tapping horse that knew its times-table would not be out of character for Ed Sullivan.

In later years I learned that Clever Hans, as well as I assume his circus colleagues, weren’t quite as clever as advertised. It’s not exactly that Hans was exposed as a fraud—I’m not sure a horse can be a fraud—but his owner had him trained to read telltale signs from audience members who were invited to pose questions to him. For example, as Hans tapped his way toward the correct answer of, say 7, his interlocutor would tense up and thereby communicate through body language that the horse had reached the answer. Still clever, but not horse higher-math.

Then I encountered Alex, a remarkable gray parrot who it was reliably claimed did more than squawk “Hello” and “Pretty Boy.” His owner and teacher, Irene Pepperberg, an animal psychologist, bought him from a Chicago pet shop and during a 30-year relationship taught him 150 words; but, much more significant, he appeared to understand them, not just repeat or parrot them back.

For example, when Alex was shown an object and was asked about its shape, color, or material, he could label it correctly. He could understand that a key was a key no matter its size or color, and he could figure out how the key was different from others. He knew what color he was, learning "gray" after being told the answer six times. And evoking Hans, to a limited extent, Alex could even add, correctly giving the number of similar objects on a tray.

My favorite Alex story is about how he from time to time would express annoyance with Irene Pepperberg. If he said “Wanna banana,” but she offered him a nut instead, he would glare in petulant silence; ask for the banana again; take the nut and throw it at her; or before requesting it again, in equally dramatic ways, display annoyance.

Needless to say, these very “human” qualities, among other things, attracted me to Alex, and I was quite sad in 2007 when I heard that he had departed this mortal coil.

Prior to Alex’s accomplishments (Pepperberg claimed he was as intelligent as a dolphin or a typical five-year-old child), it was believed that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex language-related problems and that birds were thus not capable of intelligence and at best could only mimic words.

Chimpanzees, on the other hand, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, chimps such as Nim Chimpsky (named playfully after linguist-cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky) and other great apes were thought to be the only non-human animals able to understand and use versions of language. Nim was raised by a family in a New York City brownstone and before he was sent away to the Institute for Primate Studies appeared to learn 150 American Sign Language signs.

But, again, as impressive as Nim may have been—and there have been any number of very mart chimps--we should not be too fast to conclude that only great apes are capable of showing signs of human-like intelligence

As confirmation that Alex the gray parrot was the real thing, Rona and I recently encountered Carmelita, our friend Vicente’s son’s parrot. Vicente frequently baby-sits for her when his son is out of town; and since Vicente knows we like both him and Carmelita, when Carmelita is with him he invites us to come to his house for a delicious home-cooked lunch.

Though Carmelita does not mimic much less “speak,” she is an astonishingly sensitive and assertive communicator. She appears to have her very own vocal and sign languages.

To illustrate, ours is always a lunch that must be shared with Carmelita. At her insistence. While we eat Vicente’s fiery New Mexico chilies and enchiladas, Carmelita, not to be left out, makes a racket in her cage, moves to the perch nearest the door, and begins to gnaw on the latch. This is her signal that she wants out and in on the feast.

Understanding, Vicente opens the door and Carmelita, using her beak, works her way down the bars of the cage, slides down the leg of the table it rests on to the floor, and then jounces through the terrace door to join us at the patio table.

To get to the table top she grasps Rona’s pants leg and purposefully hoists herself up onto Rona’s lap, then along the sleeve of her sweater, and up onto her shoulder where she announces her arrival by nuzzling Rona’s hair and gently nipping her ear.

Squawks next declare her intentions. We as yet cannot distinguish among them, they in truth all sound pretty much the same to us; but Vicente has no difficulty knowing the difference between Carmelita’s wanting affection (head stroking), food (not his wonderful tortillas but her crackers and Polly seeds), or attention (exchanges of head nods and facial expressions). Quite a dialogue!

And then after a few delightful hours together, when Vicente walks with us to our car, Carmelita intensifies her squawks, so much so that Vicente feels the need to say back to her, “Don’t worry. I am not leaving. I am just seeing Rona and Steven to their car. I will be right back.” Lots of cognitive information there. But not too much to confuse Carmelita who quiets right down. Actually, before doing so she signals Vicente, with squawks of a very different sort, that she “understands” and will remain calm until he returns.

Fascinated by this flood of information about animal intelligence--some remembered, some experienced--I next read about Chaser (see linked), a border collie with a “vocabulary” of more than 1,000 words who’s seeming cognitive feats, it is claimed, may help shed light on how language is acquired by humans.

Also purchased in a pet story by a psychologist, John Pilley, who had read about another border collie, Rico, who was reputed to know 200 words, the competitive Pilley wanted to see if he could train Chaser to understand more. And so he spent four to five hours a day for years teaching Chaser an ever-growing series of nouns. Mainly words for objects such as cloth animals (he eventually learned to distinguish, can you imagine, 800 distinct ones), balls (fully 116), Frisbees (“just” 26), and a host of other plastic items.

Pilley’s technique involved showing Chaser an object, repeating its name up to 40 times, hiding it, and finally asking Chaser to find it, which she proved remarkable adept at doing.

The dog was so into these endless drills, that even now she presses Dr. Pilley to work with her for many hours each day though the good doctor, who is now 82, cannot keep up with his canine master’s demands.

As remarkable as all of this obviously is, to press matters further, to explore this remarkable dog’s cognitive capacities, Pilley some years ago added more complexity to the lessons--he experimented with verbs.

To do so, he taught Chaser three different kinds of actions—pawing, sniffing, and taking an object in her mouth. To test her learning, Chaser was presented with three items and asked to either “paw,” “sniff,” or “fetch” one of them. Chaser proved to be about as good at this as she had been in just identifying objects.

Still doubts remain. Skeptics say that many animals, especially dogs, are good at reading their master’s clues. Of seeming to act in human-like terms. What might again be called the Clever Hans Affect.

And there I am tempted to leave you. With nothing fully resolved. Except that there are now Rona’s goldfish.

Where we live in Delray there is a no-pet policy, though one owner is allowed to have her bichon frise. It was grandfathered in as part of her purchase agreement. But our neighbors are very strict about making any other exceptions and, though we would like to consider acquiring a small dog, we are careful to abide by the local rules.

But then recently we were in an antique store where Rona found a beautiful blown-glass bowl that we both instantly thought would make an ideal goldfish tank.

Looking at each other with the same idea in mind, Rona said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to . . . ?”

So we bought the bowl and off we went to a Boca pet store that specializes in exotic fish such as tetras and platies and angel fish as well as more ordinary ones such as the two fantail goldfish Rona bought along with a fish net, appropriate food, and dechlorinator.

“Do you think we’ll get in trouble with our neighbors? Fish after all are pets.”

“But not pets we have to walk on the lawn so they can do their thing. And goldfish don’t make any sounds so they won’t disturb anyone.”

“Maybe just some when gulping for air,” the aquarium owner said, listening in on our conversation, “But only if you don’t change the water frequently enough.”

“I think we’ll be fine,” Rona said assuredly.

“But what if there are any complaints?” I am a worrier.

By then Rona was no longer paying attention to my concerns and was already fully occupied with her two fish, which had been placed in a large clear plastic bag that seemed designed to ease the trauma of the long car ride back to our apartment.

“Here fishy, fishy,” Rona was saying to them with a friendly smile on your face. “We’ll be home in just a few minutes and I promise to take good care of you.” She was speaking a form of baby talk to them. In spite of her calm words and promises, in the bag the fish swam in frantic circles.

“I suppose you’ll even give them names,” I said as if to myself.

“Probably,” Rona said to herself, still ignoring me.

When we got them home and installed in their bowl, Rona began to spend hours with them, which has since become part of our new routine. Not hours at a time but hours, it seems to me, each day while she feeds them and watches their antics. Carryings-on that even I am willing to acknowledge that over time seem less and less random and more purposeful. They have clearly gotten to “know” Rona (or at least recognize her). When she is in the room they race over to the side of the bowl nearest her. They do not, except on occasion, do the same when I am in the vicinity. When they do, it appears more arbitrary—the result of swimming around—than intentional.

It makes me wonder. Do they behave to Rona as they clearly do since she is their primary feeder? Is their response to her presence more a matter of anticipating food than just to her being there? To their “knowing” and liking her because of her general involvement with them and the obvious pleasure she takes in being near them and enjoying their graceful movements?

I know that scientists tell us that all land animals—humans very much included—are descended from fish. That some fish, our very distant ancestors, crawled up onto land, using their under- or pelvic-fins to propel them onto some ancient beach, and that over many millennia those fins mutated and became our legs and arms. This I know from my amateur interest in human biology and evolution.

Could this then help explain what is obviously a developing deep connection between Rona and The Boys? Her current generic name for the two of them.

There is no way yet to know. I do, though, see some new behavior almost every day. New behavior on the part of The Boys and, truth to be told, Rona.

For example, even after Rona has changed the water in the bowl, which because it is more suffused with oxygen than the discarded water energizes them—as it would us—I notice that they still spend more time at the surface, which I have previously thought was the way they gulped for air as the air in the bowl’s water was becoming depleted. So, it appears, their freshened-water behavior clearly is not oxygen-related.

This gulping also means that The Boys are generating more bubbles that linger at the margins of the water’s surface. I admit that I may be becoming delusional, but these seem to me to be forming patterns. Not necessarily the residue of spontaneous gulping. And the bubbles appear to increase in number and complexity as Rona leans closer and closer to them. Talking to them all the time.

I am coming to think that none of this is associated with feeding but rather may be their response, their excitement at the fresh water and shot of oxygen they need to survive. And may be their attempt to “thank” Rona for providing it. Which is very different—in cognitive terms (if I can use this term when talking about fish)—than a conditioned reaction to the anticipation of feeding.

I plan to study this behavior and especially these bubbles more systematically. What I am reporting here is admittedly a very early reading of what might be going on.

We may again be in a Clever Hans situation; but then again, who knows, who would have thought a parrot could say “Wanna a banana” and show “human” annoyance when it wasn’t forthcoming.

All I know is that when Rona sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep I hear her in the living room having more and more complex “conversations” with The Boys, and in turn I hear lots of bubbles being produced.