26/08/2026
In 1977, a graduate student named Irene Pepperberg purchased an African grey parrot from a pet store. She named him Alex, short for **Avian Learning EXperiment**. What followed over the next 30 years would challenge what scientists thought animals were capable of understanding.
Alex could identify around 50 different objects, seven colors, five shapes, and quantities up to eight. He could recognize Arabic numerals, understood a concept similar to zero, and could communicate his wants and preferences. He could even tell Pepperberg when he was finished working and wanted to stop.
Before Alex, many scientists believed that sophisticated language-based reasoning was limited mainly to primates and cetaceans. Alex helped change that view.
On the evening of September 6, 2007, Pepperberg said goodnight and placed Alex in his cage. As he did every night, Alex said, **“You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you.”** Pepperberg replied that she loved him too and told him she would see him the next day.
She never got that chance.
The following morning, Pepperberg found Alex dead. He was only 31 years old. African grey parrots can often live 45–60 years in captivity. According to the Alex Foundation, his necropsy revealed no obvious immediate cause of death. The most likely explanation was a sudden catastrophic cardiovascular event associated with arteriosclerosis, potentially involving an arrhythmia, heart attack, or stroke. There had been no warning.
Today, Alex's species faces another heartbreaking threat. The African grey parrot is listed as **Endangered** by the IUCN. Over the decades, an estimated 2–3 million African grey parrots have been captured from wild populations across Central and West Africa for the international pet trade.
The same desire to own these remarkable birds has contributed to the decline of the wild populations they came from.
Alex spent three decades telling the person he trusted, **“I love you.”** On the night before he died, he said it one final time.
The next morning, he was gone.
And while one extraordinary parrot changed the way we understand animal intelligence, thousands of his wild relatives continue to disappear because people want to keep birds like him as pets.
**Photo: Alexandru Panoiu — CC BY 2.0**
