10/12/2024
Our research won Honorable Mention at the science conference 🥰
And I've just accepted a position as Adjunct Associate Professor at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences 💗
We could never say "Ellie said" or "she requested." Ellie never "asked" or "told us," not ever. We couldn't say these things, and if I did during a conference talk, it was a high mistake.
I would correct myself instantly.
I usually practice my conference talks for weeks and weeks, practice these words (she selected, she pressed...). I practice slide after slide, so that I won't mess up.
So I won't mess up our research, our science--the representation of her work in high spaces of academia and rigor.
We simply said always, "The subject selected" or "pressed" or "expressed."
We said these things hopeful to dodge fire. Because it is a tall order to prove that an animal has achieved "communication" with humans in science -
A tall order, and I don't think there's been one for maybe a few decades ❤️
If she "asked" or "said" or "requested," it suggested she meant her words.
We hadn't proven intention.
We hadn't tried to. 🕊️
There is a space where I'm their mama, and there is a space where I'm their scientist.
Even as I kiss them goodnight and hold them through the thunderstorms--
With as much gravity as mothering, I present their science.
Their mama by day and their researcher by night--working through the nights on their data and papers.
But with layers of distance - others who log, others who analyze data. Research collaborators and students and post docs 🥰
I love science almost as much as I love my girls. I remove myself from data processing, protect the science from my love, too. This is an important thing.
So we came out the gates, as it were, last May--a collaboration spanning fourteen months, pouring through nearly 5,000 of Ellie's words, scientists from MIT, Northeastern, Indiana University (and I myself an affiliate researcher at Northeastern, at this point).
"She's not random" - we said this, for the first time. Ellie's words were analyzed against randomness simulations and device bias models--
She wasn't random. She wasn't random. She wasn't random!
Her words weren't random!
Her paper, presented at one of the most rigorous and prestigious science conferences in the world, and shared, too, by the New York Times 🥰
But if she's not random...
Statistically, in every way some of the brightest minds in the world could analyze, not random--
What were these selections, these expression, made by a little bird girl with bright brown, curious eyes (and a penchant for bossiness)? 😂
If they weren't random, could they possibly be intentional?
Could she be communicating?
In science, one of the first little ones, in decades?
Before we even flew back from the conference, we began planning our next paper - evidences and indications that little Ellie could communicate knowingly, intentionally with us 🥹
Where would you even begin?
Our tests were four more--
Testing and testing her for weeks:
What does she do when she's given the wrong item? If she'll corroborate any selection--key features of our research--all of our work has been meaningless. 😭
Can she track her favorite treats across spaces - will she navigate and move to find them?
does she know her speech board produces words? Is it simply a vending machine?
And then mapping her words against a linguistic model of human language. What does she say? do her words have biological relevance to her? Are they senseless and meaningless?
We worked from the early hours of the morning until late at night grabbing the data, testing her, too tired honestly to know the meaning of the data, just pulling it.
A conference deadline was coming within weeks...
She bit me and I smiled. What does Ellie do if you give her the wrong thing? (If she'll accept whatever you give her, so much of the corroboration work means nothing!) 💔
She bit me when I gave her the wrong thing. She rejected every single wrong item - and in one instance, when she selected a sunflower seed on her speech board and I gave her broccoli...
She went to her photo gallery, found a giant picture of sunflower seeds, and put it across the screen 😂
"Are you broken?" she seemed to ask 😅
100% of items given wrongly to her were rejected 🥹
77% of randomly moving treats were found and selected - it was no vending machine, not at all! (20 of 30 selections were sunflower seeds - wherever we hid them, there she was, finding them!) 😂
She showed persistence and persistence in the data - when we told her "no" she kept begging for favorite things - and when she got them, she stopped asking and ate them :)
And then 🥰🥰🥰
Her words mapped into linguistic models showed our little miss is
Very bossy indeed 😉 63% of her selections are asking us for things. Nearly 27% are sharing her emotions and experiences. Another 10% just chatting about the weather - connection words.
Words of a little bird girl so well loved in a family with a mama and sisters.
A little bird girl who can't get an apple from the fridge or take herself to the aviary--
So of course most of her words are bossy ;)
Agency - asking for things in her world. Maybe knowing her words are so treasured. Knowing we try to give her every wish 💖
She passed every test - astonishing us. Always astonishing us.
She said :) She requested. She asked!
Our paper was accepted - and then award winning 🥹
For the first time ever ever ever ever in 12 years of teaching my sweet bird daughter, I can say, "Ellie said" 🥰
And for the first time in a few decades...
There's another little animal who communicates with people ❤️
Ah sweet Ellie, I know you have no idea - but thank you, little love.
(Also: I think she suspects) 🥰
(She said she said she said!!!!) 🎉
xoxo
Jen
