This was a nice sendoff article for Washoe and Alex who died this year. Washoe was a sign language using chimp who taught her adoptive chimpanzee son some words too. Alex was the African Grey Parrot who knew at least 100 words in English and put them to use to even tease his human handlers.
May they rest in peace. Thank you for your valuable insight into animal heads.
it wasn’t the size of their respective vocabularies so much as the frequent winsomeness of their word usage that captivated us: the way that even the simplest impromptu phrasings from them could give us sudden glimpses into the minds of other beings, into the motive and mindfulness behind language in creatures that don’t happen to speak our own.
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