As many of you might know, Chris Davis passed away in early October 2024, after a protracted battle with cancer. We will all miss her, and I thought it would be appropriate to end the year with a brief, though probably little-known remembrance of her professional life.
Chris and I first met soon after I arrived at Northwestern University in 1984. She was visiting from California, in Chicago for a conference, and “cold called” to set up a meeting. In those days, a cold call was not all that surprising; remember, almost no one had email at that time—people were just beginning to use personal computers, and she probably didn’t know her exact schedule until she arrived. She walked into the lab, and Alex, who was generally very hesitant to climb onto the hands of unfamiliar females (he had no issue with tall blond men, for reasons I could never figure out), immediately stepped up. Clearly, this woman knew what she was doing!
A Friendship Takes Root
We bonded as quickly as two people could who were separated by thousands of miles; we kept in touch with long phone calls, sharing details about both our professional and personal lives. And, a few years after that initial meeting, we were invited to give back-to-back, major talks at an annual meeting of the American Association of Avian Veterinarians.
This was a big deal for both of us. Although I had been giving public speeches for many years by that time, this was my very first veterinary conference, and I was pretty sure that no one had ever previously presented data on avian intelligence and communication to this audience. The participants would surely want to see detailed data but would be unlikely to understand the psychological jargon that I used in my usual lectures. Definitely a challenge!
However, being connected to Chris’ presentation made it much easier for me, a total outsider at the time, to be accepted. And although Chris had given talks at such conferences before, I believe this was her first major address. We spent a lot of time discussing our presentations beforehand!
The gist of both of our presentations was for veterinarians to think about treating birds the same way human medical doctors would treat pediatric patients—as intelligent beings who couldn’t talk much, who had far greater comprehension than production of human speech, and who were exquisitely sensitive to voice tone, body language, and their environment. Even if the birds didn’t necessarily understand all the words being used, they would respond to vocalizations and actions that could defuse what would otherwise be frightening interactions.
And Chris also broke “tradition”—everyone at the time always looked at a parrot with difficult issues as a problem to be “fixed,” through behavioral modification involving reward and punishment. Chris saw the bird as having a normal response to a bad situation and tried to diagnose and, if possible, fix the situation—whether it was a new grandfather clock chiming next to a cage or some form of spousal abuse that had recently begun in the household.
The expressions on the faces of many in the audience suggested that they were, to put it colloquially, “gob-smacked.” It wasn’t that they didn’t understand or appreciate our presentations; it was more a matter of coming to grips with something they hadn’t really fully thought about…and all of a sudden, realized might be important.
Needless to say, lots of questions ensued, and we spent most of the rest of the conference chatting with the attendees. We were both thrilled when these presentations led to a large number of subsequent invitations. What was truly exciting was that after a few years, the tone of the audience changed—maybe were weren’t yet quite “preaching to the choir,” but we saw a lot more faces nodding in agreement, and questions were much more specific. Chris was definitely one of the pioneers in changing not only how veterinarians but also the general public viewed and interacted with their parrot companions.
My hope is that her legacy will not be forgotten. An entire new generation of veterinary students needs to learn the same things…hopefully, their older mentors will remember those talks and disperse that knowledge.
Again, she will be really, really missed.