Evidence of Chimp Developing "Spoken" Language

testcase writes "The New Scientist has an article describing a bonobo who appears to have developed a simple vocabulary. Researchers who have analyzed recordings of the chimp have been able to identify four sounds he makes in different contexts indicating 'banana, grapes, juice and yes.'"

Comments

Evidence of Humans Undeveloping "Spoken" Language

[bic2k]

Recent studies show humans are losing the ability for "Spoken" langauge. An associate professor at the university of craven had this to say, "Our research shows that humans have been attempting to do this through the excessive use of beverages for thousands of years. Only recently has the human population discovered the "internet". This internet seems to be the cause for the slow degeneration of spoken language." Another professor from the college of fine arts and crafts had this to say, "Wait minute, got message icq".

Unfortunately ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

From the article:

"The linguists then came up with a definition that emphasised syntax much more than symbols," says de Waal. "Sometimes we feel it's a bit unfair that they move the goal posts as soon as we get near."

This is a real problem, which affects other areas of research as well, e.g. AI. There is a pseudo-religious, notably unscientific meme that basically says, "These are the things that make us human, so any time anyone shows us something else (an animal, a machine) that can do these things, we'll change the definition of 'these things.'" It's been abundantly obvious for some time that several species of smart animals have language, not only for communicating with humans but with each other -- e.g., different orca pods speak mutually incomprehensible dialects -- but there's such resistance to the idea that dedicated researchers have a hard time getting their results taken seriously. I can't think of any other area of science that's as vulnerable to ideology as research into the nature of intelligence.

(And no, evolutionary biology doesn't count, because the creationists are operating outside the scientific community, not within it -- however much the "intelligent design" people might like to believe otherwise.)

Re:Unfortunately ...

[Jerf]

This is a real problem, which affects other areas of research as well, e.g. AI.There is a pseudo-religious, notably unscientific meme that basically says,...

While I won't deny that is part of it, that is not the whole story, especially when it comes to AI. There is also "Well, hmmm, we did that and it wasn't half as good as we thought it would be. That's not truly thought."

Same for animals; the fact is these "researchers" won't ever win because we are what we are, and we are the only ones we are. No matter how many parlor tricks a chimp or ape may learn, they still aren't as good as humans, or they would effectively be humans. Same for dolphins and everything else.

The primate researchers need to be realistic and realize they are never going to convince anybody that the other primates are just as smart as us, because they aren't. If they were there would be little or no debate. I assume that's the "bar" the person in the article was bitching about, because it's the only one I can think of and the only one they might get frustrated over.

(It's worth pointing out that at least part of the reason dolphins will never outsmart us anytime soon without our help is their bodies. Bodies are intricately tied to intelligence; without the ability to manipulate their environment easily in significant ways, plus being in a technilogically hostile environment, an ocean-born dolphin could have twice our brainpower in some theoretical sense and still not stand a chance in any practical intelligence test. Change their bodies without changing their brains significantly, to the extent that makes sense biologically (it's not like there are "brain" genes per se), and the matters may change a bit. Brains aren't enough. The other primates face disadvantages in this arena too, though they are not as pronounced. There's a bit of a catch-22; the brainpower (mostly through a larger head, apparently) to use the enhanced body need to develop roughly at the same time. Neither are necessarily useful on their own; an input-starved brain will turn its neurons to other tasks, where, say, an opposable thumb without a brain to effectively use it is also useless. This is somewhat simplified.)

Re:Unfortunately ...

[Scaba]

Your 19th century thinking intrigues me. You're just kidding and/or trolling, right?

I'm reminded of a quote from the great Douglas Adams:

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.

Re:Unfortunately ...

[mensch626]

The problem is, to be generous, one of perspective. In my more judgmental moods, I say that we humans are arrogant. The natural world is incredibly complex, and animal behavior is definitely at the pinnacle of complexity. Animals and plants (I can't say re: fungi) at all levels of perceived development have been shown to communicate with each other. They may do this via vocalizations or scent, but they do it nonetheless. Vocalizations are not proof of intelligence, it's just that from our myopic perspective, we find it comfortable to judge the rest of the world from the throne we have built for ourselves. My current view is that the more we attempt to explain our superiority, the more we reveal that we are just one among many of the complex and as yet unexplainable creatures on this planet. I am thankful for the ongoing research, and hope it never stops; but let's keep in mind that the discovery of a shared characteristic between ourselves and another creature does not elevate the creature. He is what he is, and the same can be said for us. And perhaps (gasp) he is superior to us, in ways we are simply too self-absorbed to percieve. We are ever students. There are no experts.

That's just great...

[3waygeek]

now it's even harder to distinguish President Bush from a chimp.

He learned on his own!

[ParticleGirl]

The most interesting thing about this is that the bonobo in question learned this stuff on his own. We've all heard about sign language, chimps pointing to symbols on keyboards or screens or whatever... all that stuff. The skeptics have always said, "ok, fine-- but you must intensively train animals to use even very rudimentary symbolic communication; you wouldn't be able to stop a human from learning all that and much, much more. How much can all this signing mean?" This bonobo was not intensively trained. He wasn't trained to speak at all. In fact, he wasn't taught any of this, to begin with.

Human children soak up new languages like sponges. Adults are notoriously bad at learning new languages. Virtually all language research done on non-human primates to date has been intensively training adult animals to use abstract symbols (like ASL or glyphs or whatever) to make a one-to-one correspondence to an object or action.

Kanzi grew up around humans, since his mother was being intensively trained to use a keyboard and he was too young to leave her side. He was not trained. He didn't even seem interested. Then, one day, Kanzi's mother was taken away-- and he began using everything she'd been taught (quite a bit more, in fact, than she ever learned) and very accurately. He learned because he was around that type of communication when he was young, and he just "picked it up."

Now, that was when his mother was being specifically trained to use a keyboard. She wasn't being specifically trained to speak. So he picked up, on his own, that human speech has something to do with communication, and how it works, and is able to use words across contexts, and was never explicitly taught to do so. I'd call that pretty damn revealing about the inherent linguistic abilities of bonobos.

Since they're our closest relatives, I'd say it's pretty revealing about the evolutionary history of our own linguistic abilities.