Chimp Talk 01

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Documentary on animal & human language. A strangely "hard to find" Horizon episode.
From http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2007/11/the-language-of-apes/:
During the last four decades, several groups of primatologists have undertaken research programs aimed at teaching a human language to nonhuman great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans). The apparent success of efforts in the 1970s to teach American Sign Language (ASL) to Washoe, a chimpanzee, and Koko, a gorilla, challenged traditional scientific and philosophical assumptions about the intellectual capacities that supposedly distinguish human beings from other animals. More recently, the striking achievements of Kanzi, a bonobo who apparently has learned more than 3,000 spoken English words and can produce (by means of lexigrams) novel English sentences and comprehend English sentences he has never heard before, has strengthened the case of those who argue that the thinking of higher apes is much more complex than had previously been assumed and that the capacity for language use, at least at a rudimentary level, is not exclusively human. The latter conclusion, which implies that some of the cognitive systems that underlie language use in humans were present in an evolutionary ancestor of both humans and apes, is still vigorously disputed by many leading linguists and psychologists, including Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker.

According to Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi was able to understand unusual and grammatically complex requests such as Go get the balloon thats in the microwave, Show me the ball thats on TV, Put on the monster mask and scare Linda, Pour the coke in the lemonade, and Pour the lemonade in the coke. When Kanzi was nine years old, Savage-Rumbaugh tested his comprehension of simple requests against that of a two-and-a-half year-old human child, Alia. Kanzi correctly carried out 72 percent of the requests, and Alia correctly carried out 66 percent.

On the basis of this and much other similar evidence, Savage-Rumbaugh concluded that Kanzis linguistic abilities approximated those of a two-to-three year old human being. He had acquired a vocabulary of more than 3,000 words and demonstrated understanding of the thematic structure of complex verb and noun phrases. His own production of two- and three-word sentences indicated that he was using rudimentary syntactic rules that were similar, though not identical, to those characteristic of the speech of human toddlers. She attributed Kanzis remarkable achievement to his early exposure to language, at a time when his brain was rapidly developing, and to a training method based on integrating language learning with his everyday surroundings and activities, rather than on simply rewarding him for correct responses, as earlier techniques had emphasized. In short, Kanzi succeeded because he learned language during the developmental stage and in the manner in which normal human children do.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• language
• animal
• human
• communication
• science
• behavior
• experiment
• chimpanzee
• ape
• signs
• sign-language

[conman2317]

It has been very well made clear that you can only teach the chimps to mimic patterns and behavior, there sociability is far different then ours. These videos are nothing but someone teaching a monkey to mimic behavior without consciously making decisions.

[Barbaste]

You are mimicking arguments from other people! Monkey see monkey do! Anthropocentric arguments, nothing more. As J. Huxley said, thank you God, you have delivered them into my hands!

BTW: It's than, not then and their not there.

[Baddboy187]

three words. OH MY GOD!!! this is the most amazing video have ever seen. that baby ape was also the cutest thing ever

[girlscott411]

Amazing!

[thegettingby]

I have a question. If apes can't talk, how about writing?

[UKILLAh541]

@Baddboy187  thats 23 words.....

[lemoneeshortcake]

uh hello, get the lighter out of my pocket. Chimp

(not monkey) gets lighter out of pocket. thats not mimicing, thats understanding, ptosessing and replying.

[HelenKellersArmy]

Open hurry! Thanks for sharing.

[stiffyf135]

Thanks for uploading.

I'm off to teach my dog, Mr. Bojangles, to say "chicken nuggets" now. He loves nuggets more than anything else in the whole galaxy.

[MzLoathsome]

omg!! how CUTE is tht lil monkey aw!

[prettyinpink14]

monkey see monkey do?! to bad chimps arent monkeys (:

[SuperCeol]

@conman2317 how do you think a young child learns? from imitation.

[3Gyro]

"What we're interested in is not whether it fitted some abstract theory of linguistics, but, whether the chimpanzees could actually communicate information to us things that we didn't already know."

Fuck yeah, empiricism!

[QuantumProphet]

@Tclay43 Then go for a joy ride and try to communicate with your local law enforcement agent....odds are against you that he will not like positive inforcement ^^