Thinker Talker Parrot Friend

I often wonder whether pallial organization in birds is optimized for small brain spaces. As we will see in today's lecture, the "cortex-like" areas of bird brains are not strictly laminated as they are in mammals (with possible minor exceptions). Anyway, the reason for this theory is the astonishing intellectual capacity of birds like Corvids (crows, ravens, jays) and Parrots. They are simply remarkable thinkers. In today's dose of sentimentality, I'm providing a link to a NOVA segment on Irene Pepperberg who lived with, trained, loved and explored the mind of her African Gray Parrot Alex. I hope you enjoy it.