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Talking Chimpanzee

Great Apes able to communicate pic: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1269400/Does-Pansys-death-prove-chimps-really-grieve.html

by Nicholas Bc Shumate

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Evangelist

Level 4

Nicholas Bc Shumate - 9 years ago Permalink Edit

Wow. I am blown away not only by the implications of communication with other species, but also by the purely amazing sight of a Bonobo discovering an electric key board for the first time. I am captured by the breath taking future at this angle. I have long looked into the eyes of my own animal companion, a female German Shepherd, and knew that there was more there than the eye can see. To see Dolphin fondly eyeing itself in the mirror, thinking who knows what, and realizing that I am not mad, and that I don't have to really consider institutionalizing myself. Personally, I would relish every second of any kind of communication with a Great Ape, Dolphin, Whale, Dog, why I would love to come? This warms my heart and galvanizes me to move forward.

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Evangelist

Level 4

Nicholas Bc Shumate - 9 years ago Permalink Edit

"Koko, a lowland gorilla born in 1971, is currently the most language-proficient nonhuman, according to the Gorilla Foundation, which teaches ASL to gorillas.

The gorilla has a vocabulary of more than a thousand signs, understands about 2,000 words of spoken English, and initiates most conversations with people, according to the foundation's website.

Her IQ is between 70 and 95 on a human scale—100 is considered a 'normal' human IQ." (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/pictures/110805-rise-planet-apes-movie-science-chimps-gorillas-tools/#/primate-intelligence-milestones-koko-gorilla-sign-language_38362_600x450.jpg)

So apes have the intelligence level of roughly a six year old child, they exhibit the same signs of cognitive development that we as humans do when growing up and learning. Its truly incredible.

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

They are indeed our biological ancestors and possess similar mental capabilities albeit to a lesser extent. This male-female behavioral discrepancy you cite is interesting. I feel females are more amenable to training than males even in humans. Will follow up on this and find some empirical evidence to substantiate this theory.

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012438#s1

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

Thank you Nicholas! According to the study pointed out by you, there is a measurable difference between male and female chimps in social learning situations with females faring better than males. Searching for a similar study in humans....

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

No problem, It blows my mind to see these studies! I'd be willing to bet that Human females would turn out the same considering our closeness. Interesting that Bonobos are characteristically more shy than Chimpanzees. I wonder where we would see this in Humans?

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Evangelist

Level 4

Nicholas Bc Shumate - 9 years ago Permalink Edit

I am fascinated with this and terrified at the same time. Thoughts?

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

I dont think there is anything to be terrified about this. We are applying our abilities and intelligence to train them and help them associate auditory patterns (words) to objects, etc. If chimps could communicate better without our help, they would have done that already. Many pet animals respond to speech and commands. This particular experiment stretches it a bit further though. The whole point is to learn more about ourselves by understanding our evolutionary ancestors.

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

By the way, you can edit your posts and comments by hovering over them and clicking on the 'Edit' button.

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

I agree with you entirely and me being a Sci-Fi nerd I see the potential in a couple of hundred years if natural selection of the traits in question goes viral if you will, I see a great potential of understanding earth like we haven't been able

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

I have heard arguments that we are going against evolution and natural selection because if the primates were "Meant" to have it they would have developed it already. Personally I think this reeks of the Human Specialty Syndrome. Thoughts?

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

Chimps do communicate among themselves using their own memes and gestures. They already recognize objects and can communicate such information to their peers. All we did was to train them to understand our form of communication to a small extent to enable communication between us and the chimp in question. We dint confer any survival advantage to that particular chimp through this process and were merely experimenting to understand their level of intelligence and dexterity. Contd..

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

So I dont think the question of messing up with evolution and natural selection arises here. By the way, what's this 'Human Specialty Syndrome' all about? I've never heard of it?

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

Well ppl think we as a race were divinely chosen for things like speech and so are somehow more special than anything else

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

Many animals communicate through sound and we being at the pinnacle of evolution, are able to use the same ability in a much more sophisticated manner. Creationist theory, just like geocentric theory of the universe, is a reminiscent of our past understanding of the world and nothing more in my opinion.

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

yet it enshrouds my generation like a drunken stupor

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

Im curious as to the knowledge exchange on both sides, we could pass to them technologies that they could use and in return information about the earth that they themselves are more intune with and so more readily connected with the earth itself. The question is what tech for what info?

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

Your thought of knowledge transfer between primates and us makes me wonder too. What information do they have that we can use and what can a trained primate when re-incorporated back into its native group carry to its peers that will eventually become part of their culture? Primates have been around humans for some time now; have they learned anything from us? contd..

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Praveen Baratam, Maven - 9 years ago Edit

Animals while having poor reasoning capabilities sometimes have specialized senses and instincts (some birds for example can predict weather and move away, dogs have far better hearing capabilities, etc.). Early human civilizations did use cues from animals to understand weather and predict predator movements. Is there any information that we can gain from communicating with primates which can't be learnt from observing them? Interesting!

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

Exactly! I'm excited but at the same time I don't think that this current society could responsibly handle something like that. If all of the sudden we got a gorilla that can speak a coherent language and reason based off of this and people start saying "Oh its an animal, it doesn't have rights" contd...

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Nicholas Bc Shumate, Evangelist - 9 years ago Edit

That thing is gonna be throwin' cars around like it was going out of style. Then if we put it down, that is gonna cause a freaking riot and rightly so, and we as humans wouldn't be able to take them. Planet of the Apes just walking off the screen. That is if we mess it up.

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Evangelist

Level 4

Nicholas Bc Shumate - 9 years ago Permalink Edit

http://player.fm/series/science-fantastic-with-michio-kaku/michio-asks-dr-lisa-heimbauer-can-you-train-a-chimpanzee-from-birth-to-learn-the-english-language

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