Animal Psychology
neurontic | September 10, 2007Tonight, I'm holding my own private Irish wake for Alex, the extraordinary parrot. (Pass the Bushmill's, folks. This is going to be a tearjerker.)
Alex, an African Gray parrot, whose linguistic prowess put many-a-kindergartner to shame, is dead at the tender age of 31 of unknown causes. (In case you haven't been studying up on avian lifespan, large parrots can live to be over 80.) If this strikes you as less than tragic than I'm willing to bet that a) you have a heart of stone, or b) you were unaware of Alex's intellectual gifts. If you fall into the latter category, allow me to get you up to…
neurontic | January 3, 2006The New York Times Magazine ran a fascinating article by Charles Siebert, The Animal Self, last weekend about a newly minted field of psychology called Animal Personality. The burgeoning psychological school subscribes to the theory that animals, like humans, are born with innate character traits, which are either magnified or diminished by their formative experiences.
Pet owners across the country, no doubt, greeted this news with a resounding, 'Duh.' But in psychology circles, Animal Personality is highly controversial.
To traditionalists, the theory smacks of quackery. But the field's…