I received a sad e-mail today. Alex, the African Grey parrot and companion of my friend Irene Pepperberg passed away. (See http://www.alexfoundation.org.)
I've had fascinating discussions with Irene about the multi-sensory abilities and psychic abilities of animals and their apparent ability to communicate over long distances. In our talks, it seemed as if Alex was often very aware of how other human beings and parrots that he personally knew were doing.
While I do not know if Irene ever pursued scientific research in this area, I do know that her observations of Alex and Alex's comments about other people and birds at long distance locations was often right on the money.
Was Alex a psychic bird? Are all birds, or other two and four footed animals talented in the multi-sensory or psi arena? What we observed about Alex, his ability to communicate directly with Irene his thoughts and feelings was uncanny and in a word, marvelous!
I would love to see more research done on psychic ability and our non-human friends.
Until then, my heart and prayers go out to Alex and to Irene Pepperberg. Alex was an amazing individual and will be sorely missed.
