I’d strongly suggest the movie project nim, if you haven’t seen it. In some respects chimpanzee intelligence develops faster than that of a human child, but it also planes off much earlier. Their childhood development period is much shorter.
To first approximation, general intelligence in animals can be predicted by number of neurons/synapses in general learning modules, but this isn’t the only factor. I don’t have an exact figure, but that poster article suggests parrots have perhaps 1-3 billion ish cortical neuron equivalent.
The next most important factor is probably degree of neotany or learning window. Human intelligence develops over the span of 20 years. Parrots seem exceptional in terms of lifespan and are thus perhaps more human like—where they maintain a childlike state for much longer. We know from machine learning that the ‘learning rate’ is a super important hyperparameter—learning faster has a huge advantage, but if you learn too fast you get inferior long term results for your capacity. Learning slowly is obviously more costly, but it can generate more efficient circuits in the long term.
I inferred/guessed that parrots have very long neotenic learning windows, and the articles on Alex seem to confirm this.
Alex reached a vocabulary of about 100 words by age 29, a few year’s before his untimely death. The trainer—Irene Pepperberg - claims that Alex was still learning and had not reached peak capability. She rated Alex’s intelligence as roughly equivalent to that of a 5 year old. This about makes sense if the parrot has roughly 1/6th our number of cortical neurons, but has similar learning efficiency and long learning window.
To really compare chimp vs parrot learning ability, we’d need more than a handful of samples. There is also a large selection effect here—because parrots make reasonably good pets, whereas chimps are terrible dangerous pets. So we haven’t tested chimps as much. Alex is more likely to be a very bright parrot, whereas the handful of chimps we have tested are more likely to be average.
Not much to add here, except that it’s unlikely that Alex is an exceptional example of a parrot. The researcher purchased him from a pet store at random to try to eliminate that objection.
I’d strongly suggest the movie project nim, if you haven’t seen it. In some respects chimpanzee intelligence develops faster than that of a human child, but it also planes off much earlier. Their childhood development period is much shorter.
To first approximation, general intelligence in animals can be predicted by number of neurons/synapses in general learning modules, but this isn’t the only factor. I don’t have an exact figure, but that poster article suggests parrots have perhaps 1-3 billion ish cortical neuron equivalent.
The next most important factor is probably degree of neotany or learning window. Human intelligence develops over the span of 20 years. Parrots seem exceptional in terms of lifespan and are thus perhaps more human like—where they maintain a childlike state for much longer. We know from machine learning that the ‘learning rate’ is a super important hyperparameter—learning faster has a huge advantage, but if you learn too fast you get inferior long term results for your capacity. Learning slowly is obviously more costly, but it can generate more efficient circuits in the long term.
I inferred/guessed that parrots have very long neotenic learning windows, and the articles on Alex seem to confirm this.
Alex reached a vocabulary of about 100 words by age 29, a few year’s before his untimely death. The trainer—Irene Pepperberg - claims that Alex was still learning and had not reached peak capability. She rated Alex’s intelligence as roughly equivalent to that of a 5 year old. This about makes sense if the parrot has roughly 1/6th our number of cortical neurons, but has similar learning efficiency and long learning window.
To really compare chimp vs parrot learning ability, we’d need more than a handful of samples. There is also a large selection effect here—because parrots make reasonably good pets, whereas chimps are terrible dangerous pets. So we haven’t tested chimps as much. Alex is more likely to be a very bright parrot, whereas the handful of chimps we have tested are more likely to be average.
Not much to add here, except that it’s unlikely that Alex is an exceptional example of a parrot. The researcher purchased him from a pet store at random to try to eliminate that objection.