<P> Alex ( 1976 -- 6 September 2007 ) was an African grey parrot and the subject of a thirty - year ( 1977 -- 2007 ) experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg , initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University . When Alex was about one year old , Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop . The name Alex was a backronym for avian language experiment , or avian learning experiment . </P>
which researcher trained an african grey parrot to answer spoken questions with spoken words
Irene Pepperberg