Dr. Dolittle had Polynesia, Dr. Pepperberg had Alex

One of my absolutely favorite set of books when I was a kid was Dr. Dolittle. This was well before the movies. The stories were wonderful for a little boy who loved all things animal. Of course my favorite character, after Dr. Dolittle, was Polynesia the Parrot. (Well, probably it was Timothy Stubbins, the nine and a half year old boy who 'discovers' the good doctor.) Dr. Dolittle's important gift was his ability to talk to all the animals.


I'm sure Dr. Dolittle was the reason that I was always skeptical when I heard people - even scientists - say that humans were the only animal that could talk. I think Dr. Dolittle must have set my mind to be receptive to seeing evidence that they could. And eventually, even scientists were saying that 'higher' animals, like whales and dolphins and chimps, could, in fact, communicate. People who worked closely with animals always knew that.

So as Terry Gross woke me up this morning interviewing Irene Pepperberg, I was drawn right in. This was a lady who taught her parrot to talk. Not just "Polly wants a Cracker." She did demonstrations that showed the that Alex could distinguish words and concepts:

Fresh Air from WHYY, November 12, 2008 · Although his brain was no bigger than a walnut, Alex the African gray parrot could do more than speak and understand — he could also count, identify colors and, according to his owner Irene Pepperberg, develop an emotional relationship. When Alex died in September 2007, his last words to Pepperberg were "You be good. I love you."

You can listen to the interview at the link above. A couple points stuck in my mind.

• First, was how she was treated when she applied for her first grant to work with Alex. She says that one applicant reviewer questioned what she was smoking. A great example of Thomas Kuhn's discussions on how holders of a paradigm (in this case operant conditioning) reject ideas that contradict the premises of their paradigm.

• Second, was the idea that Hugh Lofting, Dolittle's creator wrote in the passage above (originally copyrighted in 1922, my edition says it's the 24th impression) that animals have their own languages, but we only notice their linguistic abilities when they learn a human language. Which led me to wonder, if people are so smart, how come we can only talk to animals when they learn our language? Well, of course that isn't quite true since horse and dog-whisperers are examples of people who have learned to understand animal languages.

There's more, but I'm heading out to the Alaska Apple Users Group meeting and I need to be going. But I would also mention that when I taught 6th grade in LA the year between Peace Corps and graduate school, I brought in my Dr. Dolittle book to read after lunch to the class. One day, as I was reading to my African-American students, I realized that Dr. Dolittle was about to use a racist phrase. I stopped in mid-sentence. When the students asked about Dr. Dolittle the next day I made up something like the book was due back at the library. If it happened today, I would have used that situation to give a lesson on how we had evolved in terms of racism, but I wasn't that evolved at the time.


The picture of Irene and Alex is from the Fresh Air site. The one of Dr. Dolittle and Polynesia is from the book cover at the top.