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The Alex story is dear to Cindy and I. Not only are we bird owners, we had an African Grey that we got in 1996. He had a fairly large vocabulary by 1998 when he died of a pulmonary disorder. We were not aware at the time but it appears that these creatures are highly susceptible to chest cavity infections. That is what killed Alex as well. Alex is actually an acronym standing for Avian Linguistic EXperiment. Alex taught us that cognitive language skills are not possessed only by humans.
I read about Alex in a National Geographic article on animal intelligence a few months ago. Amazing stuff!! Here is a link to an abbreviated link to the article if you're interested. Unfortunately, I don't think this abbreviated version has anything about Alex but it's very interesting nonetheless. The diverse range of intelligence over such a broad range of species is amazing.
Sorry about that, here's the link: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text/4