Nothing unethical here going on as you seem to imply. Certainly not torture. Therefore, there's no need for the scare quotes around the word scientist.
Also, it should be noted that not every animal subject will respond this well to such teaching. Most dogs do well to get up to a couple hundred words in their vocabulary. (Our chihuahua/dachshund mix only seems to understand a few dozen words, but we're not very strict with him.)
There was a lot of work done with African Gray parrots -- look up ALEX (an acronym for Avian Language EXperiment). Much of the work was done at University of Arizona.
Nothing unethical here going on as you seem to imply. Certainly not torture. Therefore, there's no need for the scare quotes around the word scientist.
Also, it should be noted that not every animal subject will respond this well to such teaching. Most dogs do well to get up to a couple hundred words in their vocabulary. (Our chihuahua/dachshund mix only seems to understand a few dozen words, but we're not very strict with him.)
There was a lot of work done with African Gray parrots -- look up ALEX (an acronym for Avian Language EXperiment). Much of the work was done at University of Arizona.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)