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Groundbreaking Research Has Scientists Talking With Apes
John Berman, ABC World News
Thanks to TOM J. LAWSON for the link.
Reposted from:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Technology/Story?id=3222942&page=1
Click here to watch video
The Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, is home to seven bonobos -- a close relative of the chimpanzee -- and three orangutans. But if you think Iowa might be a strange place for them to live, don't say it out loud … these apes understand English.
Really. No kidding.
Watch John Berman's interview with a bonobo tonight on "World News With Charles Gibson"
You can talk to the apes, and they know what you are saying.
The residents of the Great Ape Trust are part of groundbreaking language research where the apes are being taught to communicate with humans by pressing 350 lexigrams -- symbols that appear on a screen and represent thoughts and objects.
The superstar is 26-year-old Kanzi, whom Bill Fields has been working with for years. To communicate, Fields speaks to Kanzi, who then points to the lexigrams to respond and demonstrate a level of understanding.
"Qualitatively, there is no difference between Kanzi's language and my language," Fields said. "It's a matter of degree."
The key to ensuring they grasp the language, the researchers said, is to start teaching them when they are young, just like you would with human babies.
"Language is culturally acquired. Its not learned," said Fields. "It's acquired in the immediate postnatal antogyny of the organisms life. The only organism capable of learning language are babies."
They've been communicating with bonobos through the keyboard for almost three years, relying on a technique developed in 1971 and also used at the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University and other facilities.
At the Great Ape Trust, researchers said the apes would likely never be able to vocalize words like humans; they are limited by the range of their vocal chords among other things.
However, Fields swears he has heard Kanzi try to say "thank you."
'Surprise' From an Interview With an Ape
When they begin to work with the apes, some pick up the vocabulary quickly while others never acquire the language.
Rob Shumaker has known Azy, a majestic, huge male orangutan, for more than 20 years. He talks to Azy, just like he would speak to one of his children, or a longtime friend.
"When I'm around them we just kind of talk normally," he explained. "I use my normal vocabulary, my normal voice my normal gestures."
Sound beyond belief? During a visit to the Great Ape Trust, I sat down with Kanzi the Bonobo -- the first Ape I have ever interviewed.
I read Kanzi a series of words, and then without fail, he hit the corresponding lexigram symbol on a touch screen.
I said "Egg."
He pressed "Egg."
I said, "M and M."
He pressed "M and M."
Then Kanzi took control of the conversation and pressed the symbol for "Surprise!"
Needless to say, I was quite surprised, having never actually spoken to an ape before.
But Kanzi was pointing to a box of candy that I was sitting near. That is the surprise that he wanted.
Moments like this are proof that these conversations help scientists learn about apes, from the apes themselves.
"If we have some common means of communicating with each other," said Shumaker , " we suddenly have exponentially large number of topics that we can explore."
"It allows Kanzi to tell me if his stomach hurts, his head hurts or if he'd like to be alone or if he's afraid or scared," Fields added.
Speaking Up for Their Survival
There's another possible impact of the communication with these apes: These celebrity apes may help raise awareness of the plight of apes in the wild.
Shumaker said there is an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 bonobos left in the wild, and 50 - 55,000 orangutans in the wild, so raising awareness of just how smart these creatures are might encourage the public to take their problems more seriously.
"The research we conduct here powerfully informs people about the nature of great ape intelligence," Shumaker said. "We know that humans and great apes share far more than they differ. I think we have to recognize that. If that does not compel us to preserve great apes in the wild, I don't know what can."
The insight into ape learning might also give some insight into human development.
"It tells us about how we learn everything," said Fields, "what the antecedents are to the kind of powerful learning that could occur in humans."
Sometimes the similarities to humans are downright eerie. When I asked Kanzi if he wanted coffee, he enthusiastically shook his head up and down.
Bonobos share 98 percent of their DNA with humans -- they also apparently share a love of decaf caramel machiatos.
For more information contact the http://www.greatapetrust.org.
Reposted from:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Technology/Story?id=3222942&page=1
Click here to watch video
The Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, is home to seven bonobos -- a close relative of the chimpanzee -- and three orangutans. But if you think Iowa might be a strange place for them to live, don't say it out loud … these apes understand English.
Really. No kidding.
Watch John Berman's interview with a bonobo tonight on "World News With Charles Gibson"
You can talk to the apes, and they know what you are saying.
The residents of the Great Ape Trust are part of groundbreaking language research where the apes are being taught to communicate with humans by pressing 350 lexigrams -- symbols that appear on a screen and represent thoughts and objects.
The superstar is 26-year-old Kanzi, whom Bill Fields has been working with for years. To communicate, Fields speaks to Kanzi, who then points to the lexigrams to respond and demonstrate a level of understanding.
"Qualitatively, there is no difference between Kanzi's language and my language," Fields said. "It's a matter of degree."
The key to ensuring they grasp the language, the researchers said, is to start teaching them when they are young, just like you would with human babies.
"Language is culturally acquired. Its not learned," said Fields. "It's acquired in the immediate postnatal antogyny of the organisms life. The only organism capable of learning language are babies."
They've been communicating with bonobos through the keyboard for almost three years, relying on a technique developed in 1971 and also used at the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University and other facilities.
At the Great Ape Trust, researchers said the apes would likely never be able to vocalize words like humans; they are limited by the range of their vocal chords among other things.
However, Fields swears he has heard Kanzi try to say "thank you."
'Surprise' From an Interview With an Ape
When they begin to work with the apes, some pick up the vocabulary quickly while others never acquire the language.
Rob Shumaker has known Azy, a majestic, huge male orangutan, for more than 20 years. He talks to Azy, just like he would speak to one of his children, or a longtime friend.
"When I'm around them we just kind of talk normally," he explained. "I use my normal vocabulary, my normal voice my normal gestures."
Sound beyond belief? During a visit to the Great Ape Trust, I sat down with Kanzi the Bonobo -- the first Ape I have ever interviewed.
I read Kanzi a series of words, and then without fail, he hit the corresponding lexigram symbol on a touch screen.
I said "Egg."
He pressed "Egg."
I said, "M and M."
He pressed "M and M."
Then Kanzi took control of the conversation and pressed the symbol for "Surprise!"
Needless to say, I was quite surprised, having never actually spoken to an ape before.
But Kanzi was pointing to a box of candy that I was sitting near. That is the surprise that he wanted.
Moments like this are proof that these conversations help scientists learn about apes, from the apes themselves.
"If we have some common means of communicating with each other," said Shumaker , " we suddenly have exponentially large number of topics that we can explore."
"It allows Kanzi to tell me if his stomach hurts, his head hurts or if he'd like to be alone or if he's afraid or scared," Fields added.
Speaking Up for Their Survival
There's another possible impact of the communication with these apes: These celebrity apes may help raise awareness of the plight of apes in the wild.
Shumaker said there is an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 bonobos left in the wild, and 50 - 55,000 orangutans in the wild, so raising awareness of just how smart these creatures are might encourage the public to take their problems more seriously.
"The research we conduct here powerfully informs people about the nature of great ape intelligence," Shumaker said. "We know that humans and great apes share far more than they differ. I think we have to recognize that. If that does not compel us to preserve great apes in the wild, I don't know what can."
The insight into ape learning might also give some insight into human development.
"It tells us about how we learn everything," said Fields, "what the antecedents are to the kind of powerful learning that could occur in humans."
Sometimes the similarities to humans are downright eerie. When I asked Kanzi if he wanted coffee, he enthusiastically shook his head up and down.
Bonobos share 98 percent of their DNA with humans -- they also apparently share a love of decaf caramel machiatos.
For more information contact the http://www.greatapetrust.org.
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Posted: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 | PermalinkComments 1 - 42 of 42 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #46242 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 4:34 pm
The video link does not appear to be working. Other Comments by steve99
3. Comment #46244 by Salvatore on May 30, 2007 at 4:38 pm
I don't get it. I talk with apes all the time.------
"antogyny"
Other Comments by Salvatore
4. Comment #46250 by He'sAVeryNaughtyBoy on May 30, 2007 at 4:49 pm
The video works by clicking the picture in the article, then clicking the upper right picture in the page that opens.I'd like to be proven wrong, but I see little difference between this research and my Mum's dog going ballistic when I shout "Ball!" at her. So an ape can touch a screen when you give it the right command words? Congratulations - a form of communication (action and reaction) that we see all the time in the animal kingdom.
Is this realy comparable with human conversation? Is this any different to human conversation? I would have been more interested in those questions. This particular article doesn't seem to have anything new to say.
The ape can tell you when it's head hurts. Congratulations - my Mum's older dog can tell you when her bladder hurts and she needs to piss. (The younger one hasn't quite grasped it yet though, even after four years)
Other Comments by He'sAVeryNaughtyBoy
5. Comment #46256 by Nails on May 30, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Sorry He'sAVeryNaughtyBoy, I don't share your opinion on this one little bit.Nearly 20 years ago I watched a video of a chimp called Panbanisha who could communicate in this way, displaying the brains of an average 3-yer old child I would guess and I as fascinated. Especially when a chimp uses signs for 'cool-drink-box' (3 signs) instead of 'fridge' (1 sign), showing a little intuition and maybe a child-like beleif of purpose in evey-day objects.
http://www.iowagreatapes.org/bonobo/meet/
Other Comments by Nails
6. Comment #46257 by js5535 on May 30, 2007 at 5:09 pm
[quote]For more information contact the http://www.greatapetrust.org[/quote]I definitely recommend some of the videos on this website. Its absolutely amazing to see just how intelligent our fellow ape species are. I haven't seen Chimpanzee or Orangutan understanding and communication this advanced before.
Other Comments by js5535
7. Comment #46272 by keith on May 30, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I recognize that bonobo. It's Roddy McDowell with his ape-suit back on. He's grown a little fatter too, as one would expect from a 70-year-old actor. Other Comments by keith
8. Comment #46273 by savroD on May 30, 2007 at 6:13 pm
I can't wait till they start writing a magic...oooppps i mean holy book. Dictated by an angel of course! Other Comments by savroD
9. Comment #46281 by Godless on May 30, 2007 at 6:44 pm
I'm thinking "Planet of the Apes" right now...How prescient.
Other Comments by Godless
10. Comment #46295 by PsyPro on May 30, 2007 at 8:28 pm
There are at least two points to be made in response to this piece. The first, and most important, is that our attitude toward whether or not we should prevent the extirpation if not extinction of a harmless (to humans) species should be so closely (if at all) tied to whether or not some members of that species are human-like in some otherwise thought to be uniquely human capacity or another. The second, of course, is quality of the evidence that they are indeed so, especially when the referent capacity is alleged to be language or explicit thought. The evidence here is woefully inadequate, not different in kind or quantity from the much earlier, but no less hyped, language learning in chimpanzees such as Washoe.Edit: one too many "not"s
Other Comments by PsyPro
11. Comment #46311 by Roy_H on May 30, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Actually I thought Kanzi looked rather bored , almost as if he was thinking "Oh no, here we go again, of course I can do it you silly bugger!" Other Comments by Roy_H
12. Comment #46314 by PsyPro on May 30, 2007 at 10:40 pm
The images and comments are compelling, but few of us realise just how easy it is to be mistaken about what one should conclude from such mostly uncontrolled or poorly controlled observations. For those who think there is really something in this piece and the associated video clips that forces the conclusions proffered, please see, e.g., Povinelli, D.J. (2000). Folk physics for apes: The chimpanzee's theory of how the world works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, and many subsequent Povinelli publications for compelling demonstrations of just how easily fooled we are into thinking these non-human primates are demonstrating anything particularly ``deep'' in their behaviours in these tasks. Mind you, the same applies to many similar claims about human behaviour in the same or related tasks: simple mechanisms can often provide what appears to be profoundly deep or abstract behaviour where no such depth or abstraction is required. Other Comments by PsyPro
13. Comment #46337 by Nails on May 31, 2007 at 1:23 am
Sorry folks, i just don't understand your scepticism.Over the last 20 years we have learned that chimps and bonobos are as clever as a pre-school child and can recognise the rudiments of a spoken language, despitelacking the ability to vocalise themselves.
This is not canine-like, whereby they can learn a few simple commands.
They are just that one little step closer to us because of these findings and so the essence of being human is not as mysterious as we once thought. We are not alone on the planet, let alone the universe!!
Other Comments by Nails
14. Comment #46341 by Veronique on May 31, 2007 at 1:46 am
I can't recall where I first found this video of bonobos. It's a TED presentation with Susan Savage-Limbaugh with the bonobos she works with.I was stunned. I was (and still am) gobsmacked.
There is no way you can watch this without thinking: if bonobos' vocal chords had developed to the same extent that ours have, they would be talking and verbally interacting with themselves and us. We tend to be very arrogant, I am afraid.
My cats (I don't have dogs) are well aware of key words to which they have become accustomed and they know by my tone and those words what I am indicating. They are pretty good and I am pretty impressed. I have learned to teach them simple commands, each of them has his/her name and I never use the generic 'puss'. Each one responds to his/her name and the others don't buy in. Feeding time is the exception. They bitch at each other all during the preparation of their food. I can understand that. They live in an enormous enclosure that is built onto the back of my house and is part of the house. The ones that I let out (one at a time) follow me around similar to dogs; they never leave me and always come to my calls by my using their names.
Each name starts with a harsh consonant that is immediately recognisable to the owner of that name and each one was taught individually what his/her name is when he/she was a tiny kitten.
Having said all that, cats haven't the same intellectual ability that dogs have (for starters, cats aren't camp followers and don't fawn for acceptance and affection, though they give heaps of affection - my mother called it 'cupboard love'; I am a bit more generous than that).
Nevertheless, it is interesting to realise just how much they understand and can be trained (pitifully little, really, but they are smart in their own living capacity as, I guess, are all animals).
The bonobos in this video clip are astounding. I urge you all to watch it.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/76
My fish don't respond in the same way, but hey, they know me and my big bulk looks nothing like a heron to them, so they don't swim away from me - not bad for little fishies: they vacuum my fingers for food and remember from day to day what is actually going on between me and them. Some of the females allow me to pick them up in my hands when they are exhausted from the males hassling them to drop their eggs. I take those exhausted females inside into a tank where they can relax for a day or so. I don't think they remember that I am going to do that. Their exhaustion is what renders them amenable to my hands, but I think that they do know that I will never hurt them. I muck around in their space, clearing it of algae and they swim around me and certainly don't appear to be frightened. Of course, this happens on a daily basis, so they don't really have time to forget.
I have learnt to pooh pooh the idea that they have 5 second memories. They have to make a living as well as every other animal and have to be able to remember what will keep them alive. Go fish!
And no smart comments from any of you about cats and fish! thank you very much! The cats don't even seem interested in the fish. They don't like getting their paws wet.
Cheers
V
Other Comments by Veronique
15. Comment #46369 by Veronique on May 31, 2007 at 3:47 am
Can someone tell me why a freshwater swordtail fish (maybe 4" long at maturity) would develop a long 'tail' that appears to impede his movement around 'obstacles' in his swimming life. He's quick and moves well; why would he want a 'tail'? Swordtails are live breeders. It's just weird to me.Is it the peacock type display? I don't even know what compatibility, gene wise, is involved in the generation of their species or variant.
Help
V
Other Comments by Veronique
16. Comment #46372 by sgr79 on May 31, 2007 at 3:57 am
Veronique: regarding your first post, I read somewhere that cats have the mental capacity of a human two year-old...now imagine a human two-year-old who would need to be able to fend for itself and with the natural ability to hunt! As with other species though, some are smarter than others :PSo when is a scientist going to design a way to compensate for the lack of comparable vocal cords in these apes? Could some sort of voicebox work, or will we have to wait until we have more information on how brains work and measure brain activity instead? Any thoughts?
Other Comments by sgr79
17. Comment #46375 by booth on May 31, 2007 at 4:07 am
Presdient of the US in the making i feel...Other Comments by booth
18. Comment #46378 by Eamonn Shute on May 31, 2007 at 4:18 am
I don't think this is particularly new or interesting. It is already known that apes have extremely limited linguistic ability - A three year old human has enormously greater skill than any ape, and this just proves it. Other Comments by Eamonn Shute
19. Comment #46389 by Magpie on May 31, 2007 at 5:05 am
I agree that ape language abilities are quantitatively, not qualitatively, less than ours. However, it is very tempting to read far too much into the research. One of the guiding principles of animal behavioural studies is 'Morgan's Canon'; basically, an application of Occams Razor to prevent us fom over-interpreting the cognitive abilities that animals display, due to our anthropomorphising them.Whilst dolphins, parrots and non-human apes all show the rudiments of syntaxs and semantics, much of their behaviour can be interpreted as due to instrumental conditioning. For example, Gardner and Gardner (1969) taught the chimp Washoe American Sign Language. In one instance, Washoe signed 'water + bird' when she saw a novel stimulus - a swan. Does this alone mean that she understood the meaning of the words? No, because she could have been instrumentally conditioned to make certain gestures when she saw particular things to get a reward - she saw the stimuli that meant she had to do the water gesture, and she saw the stimululi that meant she had to perform the bird gesture. We simply can't conclude, from this alone, that Washoe understood.
Kanzi is undoubtedly better at 'Yerkish' than Washoe was at ASL. For example, Kanzi responded correctly to 298 of 310 sentences, performing the correct action (Savage-Rumbaugh et al, 1993). This may suggest that Kanzi understood the syntax of the sentence, but most of the sentences could only be interpreted on way - 'Knazi please carry teh straw' for example, is rather unambiguous.
Nevertheless, certain non-human speceies do have considerable lingustic learning abilities. Just don't anthropomorphise their behaviours!
Other Comments by Magpie
20. Comment #46415 by Mushroom on May 31, 2007 at 6:44 am
I'm not qualified to comment on the research myself, but it's worth knowing that the people who study language in humans are extrememly skeptical of claims of language understanding in other apes. This is from the linguist Geoff Pullum:I do not believe that there has ever been an example anywhere of a non-human expressing an opinion, or asking a question. Not ever. It would be wonderful if animals communicated propositionally -- i.e., could say things about the world, as opposed to just signalling a direct emotional state or need. But they just don't.
Monkeys saying things again -- NOT
the study of the possibilities of human/ape linguistic interactions is much colored with love, enthusiasm, empathy, creative interpretation, and wishful thinking on the part of the humans, and the whole project is scientifically suspect.
Voluble apes? I don't think so
Not directly related to this story, but to similar stories that appear in the press -
If you truly imagine that American Sign Language has ever been taught to an ape of any species other than ours, just stop relying on the trainer to tell you what the gesticulating creature is saying, and ask a native user of ASL to view a videotape and pass judgment. It isn't there. Apes cannot control ASL, or come anywhere close.
Stupid fake pet communication tricks
Steven Pinker expresses a similar view in The Language Instinct.
Other Comments by Mushroom
21. Comment #46427 by Jiten on May 31, 2007 at 7:19 am
This is just rubbish.The language of a human 3-year-old far exceeds what these chimps and apes can do or can possibly achieve.Sure the chimp points to egg when you say egg.What about when you say fried egg?Or a fried egg sandwich?You see how human language is recursive? Other Comments by Jiten
22. Comment #46431 by Rtambree on May 31, 2007 at 7:41 am
I bet Kanzi doesn't believe the world is 6,000 years old or that if he prays to the great Bonobo in the sky, he'll get all the bananas he could ever eat.Other Comments by Rtambree
23. Comment #46449 by Yorker on May 31, 2007 at 9:18 am
The story of Kanzi is an old one, I've come across it several times.However, bonobos are the horniest creatures on Earth, if I could match their copulation rate (8 to 10 times per hour), I'd consider giving up talking :)
Other Comments by Yorker
24. Comment #46477 by stephenray on May 31, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Loved the researcher who says something like "Qualitatively, Kanzi's language is the same as mine. It's just a question of degree."I wonder what he thinks 'qualitatively' means?
And, to add to the chorus, having an animal respond to a single word does not demonstrate that it understands english. My mothers dogs go berserk when someone says 'walkies', but talking to them about Harry Potter is not a particularly meaningful exercise...
Other Comments by stephenray
25. Comment #46484 by ghostbuster on May 31, 2007 at 12:50 pm
The REAL trick is when we learn how to speak bonoboese.Other Comments by ghostbuster
26. Comment #46485 by ghostbuster on May 31, 2007 at 12:51 pm
By the way, when a female gorilla looks at a picture of a male gorilla, turns away in disgust and signs "toilet water", I think she has communicated her feelings quite well. Been there myself.Other Comments by ghostbuster
27. Comment #46537 by Magpie on May 31, 2007 at 3:11 pm
The quantitative difference between non-human ape and human linguistic skills isn't, well, linguistic. Rather, many other primates have similar cognitive mechanisms to those that underlie language, but are used to organise social knowldge. As Seyforth et al (2005) note, Baboon social knowledge is representational, has discrete values, is hierarchically structured, has category based rules and is open-ended - all key aspects of human language. This a.) dovetails nicely with Dunbar's (1998) social brain hypothesis, that our language arose from our ancestor's pre-linguistic social knowledge, b.) explains why apes can achieve some form (however very basic) of langauge comprehension; they have some of the required cogntive mechanisms, and c.) as to why all of the species that we have successfully taught these extremely basic langauge skills to are social creatures with complex social networks- e.g. parrots, apes and dolphins.Furthermore, this suggests convergence upon similar cogntive mechanisms to solve social ordering problems, perhaps because such solutions are near-optimal.
Other Comments by Magpie
28. Comment #46541 by Shuggy on May 31, 2007 at 3:24 pm
By far the greater part of the interpretation is going on on the human side. Kanzi pushes "Surprise" and the naive reporter is surprised, but Kanzi has seen it happen dozens of times. And how "Surprise" means "Pass me that box of candy beside you" is beyond me. Having a consistent set of sounds emerge at the push of a button, matching the sounds experimenters make, is a neat trick, and it does give the apes the power to use what linguistic ability they have, but can the apes concatenate signs intentionally, creating meanings that the experimenters had no part in creating? I see far too much of the linguistic work being done on the human side.The other thing lacking is that this "language" has been entirely created by the humans. (I use the quotes because it lacks the essential element of all real languages, a finite number of meaningless units [letters, phonemes, chiremes] that can build an indefinite number of meaningful units [written words, spoken words, signs])
Other Comments by Shuggy
29. Comment #46542 by ricey on May 31, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Before we delve too far into the fascinating scientific and linguistic side of things, bear this in mind: Bonobos are viagra in fur - their first words to us (male, female, whatever) are likely to be obscene and of a sexual nature. Bloggers with youngsters be ready for that, in case the boffins set up the first live broadcast at family veiwing times.Other Comments by ricey
30. Comment #46567 by Makido on May 31, 2007 at 4:45 pm
What's interesting from the video, and I haven't read any of the relevant literature, is the tone with which the news anchor pronounces key words. He emphasizes them, makes them distinct from the rest of the sentence. "Can you touch.. ICE?.. ICE?.. ICE?" That alone made me pretty skeptical of this. What they should do is A) emphasize all of the words in the sentence B) emphasize no words in the sentence and then C) emphasize random words in the sentence, making sure all of the words are equally spaced. I'm willing to bet the chimp wouldn't be able to pick out relevant keywords unless they were emphasized. There's also the possibility that the chimp is reading lips, which wasn't mentioned.Other Comments by Makido
31. Comment #46579 by davyB on May 31, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Let me tell you about an afternoon I spent with a young friend of mine.He was talking only a little. He had learned to say, "The moon," and point to the moon outside. Or if you said, "The moon," he would point. "Gerbil" was also in his vocabulary.
I was sitting in a hallway with him, reading him a picture book. On one page there was a moonlight landscape. I pointed to the picture of the moon and said, "The moon." At first he looked very puzzled. Then suddenly, a look of wonder came over his face. "The moon? The mooooon?" he said. "Yes, the moon." He became very animated. "THE MOON!"
He ran to the bathroom and returned with a hair brush. He held it out. I said, "Brush." He said, "Brush." I nodded agreement. He took the brush back, returning it to where he got it, and came back with another object. We played the name-that-object game for a long time. Amazingly, he laughed at the sound of "goggles."
What I had seen was the exact moment when he figured out that words (nouns) have meaning. Before he had just been exhibiting behavior that brought him praise from grown-ups.
How does one design an experiment to determine whether a bonobo is just pointing to "the moon" without knowing that words have meaning?
Other Comments by davyB
32. Comment #46622 by Auld on May 31, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Another observation would be that when the interviewer asked whether it liked coffee, it just replied by repeating the word "coffee". It should have replied "yes" instead if it truly understood the whole sentence.Other Comments by Auld
33. Comment #46731 by The Flying Trilobite on June 1, 2007 at 10:02 am
I'm still astounded my animal intelligence. I used to live with a blue-front amazon parrot for about 10 years, and he came up with quite a few suprising statements when he wanted things. *sigh*
I wish the Great Ape Project was given a higher profile in the media.
Other Comments by The Flying Trilobite
34. Comment #46745 by Oppomystic on June 1, 2007 at 11:01 am
Oh, to return to the days of not being ashamed of nakedness - that was paradise! Other Comments by Oppomystic
35. Comment #46796 by Shuggy on June 1, 2007 at 4:35 pm
31. Comment #46579 by davyB on May 31, 2007 at 5:42 pmI pointed to the picture of the moon and said, "The moon." At first he looked very puzzled. Then suddenly, a look of wonder came over his face. "The moon? The mooooon?" he said. "Yes, the moon." He became very animated. "THE MOON!"
That reminds me that when I was learning to talk, my word for an aeroplane was "moon car". Can an(other) ape do anything creative like that?
Other Comments by Shuggy
36. Comment #46822 by rufustfirefly on June 1, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I wish someone would ask Kanzi if he's accepted Jesus as his lord and saviour, or if Allah is the one true god.Other Comments by rufustfirefly
37. Comment #46855 by Shuggy on June 2, 2007 at 1:14 am
The comments with the original articles include several of the form "But never forget, the apes are just animals." I'd almost forgotten people still make that distinction. Other Comments by Shuggy
38. Comment #46896 by Science Goddess on June 2, 2007 at 5:27 am
When I teach introductory biology classes, one of the first things we discuss is the distinction between life and non-life. We investigate the gray area in between, such as viruses. I think I'm going to use this video as a jumping-off point to introduce human and non-human. I can use it for evolution of hominids, the differences/similarities between the two, self-awareness, learning, skill acquisition, etc. Those of you who are nay-sayers may not appreciate fully the distinctions we make, perhaps unconsciously, of human and non-human. It's becoming more and more a gray area.SG
Other Comments by Science Goddess
39. Comment #46911 by godlessgay on June 2, 2007 at 7:13 am
The ape was smart enough to work in a product placement opportunity for Starbucks!Other Comments by godlessgay
40. Comment #47064 by chamber on June 3, 2007 at 12:27 am
If the apes are my anscestors, what about the skeleton that was found in Middle east and its size is 6 meters almost as it is believed that one of the first human being skeleton? I can attach it as well if you want it.Other Comments by chamber
41. Comment #47069 by Flagellant on June 3, 2007 at 12:36 am
Yes, chamberpot, please attach the skeleton. My, hasn't the internet improved recently? And without my noticing, too... Other Comments by Flagellant
42. Comment #47072 by MrGronk on June 3, 2007 at 12:58 am
Apes communicating to humans is old news - what do you think fundamentalists are doing when they're preaching?Other Comments by MrGronk
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1. Comment #46240 by MIND_REBEL on May 30, 2007 at 4:29 pm
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