Slashdot Mirror
Can Communications Be Learned From Chimps?
Pine UK writes "The Zoological Society of London are looking for volunteers who are willing to 'talk chimp' in everyday life. The ZSL will be studying the volunteers to see how talking chimp affects situations like workplace conflicts. According to BBC News, the volunteers are expected to show their emotions in a chimp like fashion. This can be done by baring their teeth and by using submissive body language such as lowering their heads and crouching. The ZSL will publish their findings later this year."
Animal behaviour experts at ZSL are asking volunteers to 'talk chimp' in everyday life and see how primate patter can resolve workplace conflicts
I can just imagine the natural progression of such an experiment:
2004: "Oooo oooo ooohhh AAHH AAHH ooo oo AAHHH AHHHH ooo ooooo..."
2005: "We own Linux."
Trolling is a art,
I really hope this is not a government sponsored study. I mean, even if researches conclude that chimp-like movements, facial expressions, and noises help solve workplace and home conflicts, how many people are really going to start walking around going "abuga luuga luuga" and whatnot?
That humans have finally been trained to communicate after years of work!
If by "commnuication" you mean throwing your own poo to show disgust, then I would say "yes!".
Of COURSE we can learn communications from chimps. Didn't you see Planet of the Apes? Wait a minute... Statue of Liberty... That was OUR planet! And you blew it up! DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!!
oo OO OOOO oo!
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
It's the British version of the American past-tense "learned."
So now you've learnt something new for today...
This gives a whole new meaning to "Going Ape-Shit" in the work place.
Legitimizing Ape-Shit behavior between team managers definately does not provide a positive answer to the question: "Is this good for the Company?".
"see how talking chimp affects situations like workplace conflicts"
I'm no expert in Zoology, but I'm assuming you'll have the shit beat out of you by the end of the day. It would be about as bad as saying "someone has the case of the Mondays" on a construciton site.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The Zoological Society of London are looking for volunteers who are willing to 'talk chimp' in everyday life.
...?
This is too rich: parody that writes itself.
Are we sure that April 7 isn't All Fool's Day
-kgj
-kgj
Righto, good chap. In jolly olde England some words are spelt differently.
Animal behaviour experts at ZSL are asking volunteers to 'talk chimp' in everyday life...
You can't be on the Internet for more than five minutes without seeing this.
OMG! Lik can u beleev teh chimps r talkin now? ROFLOLOKOL!!1!1!
The chimps is here, and they is us.
This is a special excite
This
News, the volunteers are expected to show their emotions in a chimp like fashion. This can be done by baring their teeth and by using submissive body language such as lowering their heads and crouching
And this is different from how human body language is used how?
-Colin
Why don't they just put a camera in SCO's offices?
The trolls here have been communicating on the level of lower primates for years.
No. You see, we are human beings. We have developed written and spoken language, art, music, drama and culture which allows us to communicate. Rather well, in fact.
I really don't think there is a need for "throw shit at each other" as a way to communicate.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Of course... give an infinite number of chimps an infinite amount of time and they will produce all the knowledge in the known universe.
Give a finite number of chimps a finite amount of time and they will produce slashdot comments.
Give a single chimp a broken typewriter and a banana and he will post dupes as CowboyNeal.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Humans already have a range of expected emotional responses that are ingrained into us by culture.
Honestly, if a co-worker of mine bared his teeth and cringed or tried to wave his arms about, draw himself up tall, and shriek, I'd be convinced that he was stark, raving insane. While the researchers are trying to make a point about showing off your emotions better, I think they miss the need in human society to NOT show your emotions at times.
Heck, even confrontational chimps will hide their nervousness until after a stand-off.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
... if I can retain the copyright on the Shakespeare plays I produce whilst participating.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The morphed orangutan librarian of Unseen University on Discworld is pretty expressive with variations of "ook". Many people in the novels understand him.
poo flinging behavior to show disgust (literal or figurative)... check
:-)
parasite grooming (a.k.a. the search for salty snacks)... check
flying off the handle for no readily apparent reason and causing others around you to follow same panicky behavior... check
Just like looking into the mirror!
I think some of my coworkers have already agreed to participate.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
As proposed in the article, this seems extremely lame. However, I've long thought there would be a better way to do it. Humans age 0 to about 4 show a remarkable ability to pick up any languauge. I suggest we should take some yound children (it's not like there isn't a large surplus of them) and raise them with chimps and even dolphins, as well as give them enough human contact that they also pick up our language. Then in a short time we would have people (small people, but still people) who do understand communication of these other species, rather than have people who just act like apes (we have enough of those already).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Accordint to the structuralist theory of language and society, you cannot copy the former without copying the latter. This means that if this experiment is supposed to have any value, all the participants should also create a martriarchal polyamorous sexual commune. Which reminds me: do they still need volunteers?
You mean like picking bugs out of each other's hair to show support?
Or having sex with all the females in the office in front of the men to show your power?
Or flinging sh*t at people who say stupid things in meetings?
The funny thing is, it'd still be better than the way things work at my office.
Its possible that chimp langauges might include phonetic variations that will be impossible for adult humans to hear. For example, some human languages (Navaho is one IIRC) involve phonemes that must be learned in infancy - if one doesn't hear these sounds while the brain is plastic, one never can learn these sounds. Once a baby is older than 18 months, they lose the ability to hear the differences in phonemes. The same could be true with chimps.
We adults may not even be hearing the differences in all the sounds that chimps can make (and mean). And I doubt anyone is going to let a human infant be raised by chimps to properly learn their language.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Would make for some interesting board meetings, yeah?
CEO: Profits are well and truly up because of my wonderful leadership!
*sound of several bits of dung being flung through the air with dull plops*
CEO: You're too kind, really.
Actually, "American English" is closer to the pre-1776 english than what they speak in the UK, because of America's geological isolation from the rest of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English
This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.
<joke>So you limey Brits can take your extra vowels and shove it!</joke>
=Smidge=
This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.
Then how come we write and speak "British English" (aka Commonwealth English) in Australia, New Zealand, and most other nations of the Commonwealth, despite the fact that we are far more geographically separated from Britain than the USA is?
Another thing that is strange is that (Australian) historic documents from the 1700s and 1800s use something much closer to Commonwealth English than American English.
Commonwealth English is far more widespread than American English worldwide (despite American English being the de-facto standard language of the Web).
Even the link you provided to Wikipedia claims that "language reforms [in America] were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers". It also explains that "Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster."
It does, however state that "standard American English of the upper Midwest has a sound profile much closer to seventeenth century English than contemporary speech in England". However, this is not referring to spelling and grammar.
So, American English is a version of English that is peculiar to the United States, and is far from a "traditional" approach (it was unilaterally changed by Webster to appear different from British English), and it certainly has no historical claim to be "the universal language".
[S]ome human languages (Navaho is one IIRC) involve phonemes that must be learned in infancy - if one doesn't hear these sounds while the brain is plastic, one never can learn these sounds.
Actually, all human languages use some phonemes that don't have precise correspondents in other languages. basically, if your language doesn't use a particular phoneme, you cease (after about the age of three or four months) to "gear" it -- instead you categorize it as the phoneme in your language it is "closest" too. Indeed, studies show that the brain does less work when heard sounds are closest to the learned stereotype, and more work for ambiguous sounds that "straddle" two or more known phonemes. So bigger "gaps" between "adjacent" phonemes are preferred.
This makes all kinds of sense by the way: diff'rint pee-pulp sow-nd diff-or-int, and their voices differ based on mood, emotion, wakefulness. By having broad categories for phonemes (and by using contextual clues, which is outside the scope of this discussion), you're able to understand a tired, gum-chewing tourist who doesn't share your dialect. Having to understand indistinct and potentially ambiguous utterances in your language happens much more often than attempting to learn a wholly foreign language. The human brain is adapted to "latch onto" the language it hears in infancy, and specialize in that -- and most times -- in the six million years of human evolution --, that's been the best utilization of resources.
But while adults might not be able to distinguish non-native phonemes sounds by ear, they can by oscilloscope.
The more parsimonious conclusion is that chimps don't have language -- at least not like humans do.
Do they have vocalizations? Sure. Can those vocalizations mean things? Sure -- it's not news that various species of monkeys use different vocalizations to warn of different predators. And it's known that, like human babies differentiating phonemes, juvenile monkeys must learn the meanings of those vocalizations. We even have recent evidence that some birds can understand those monkey vocalizations -- and ignore those warning of predators that don't threaten the birds.
But language is not just the vocalization of unconnected nouns: "eagle!" or "leopard!"; language, as we understand it in humans, allows far more nuanced and precise explanation than anything we se in animals. At the most mundane level, as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom point out "It makes a big difference whether a far-off region is reached by taking the trail that is in front of the large tree or the trail that the large tree is in front of." At a more sublime level, a series of unconnected nouns hasn't the power that Dante Alighieri's verse has, to make alive again in our minds his love Beatrice.
Don't misunderstand me: I agree that chimps have a social life -- a complex social life, and I accept the more controversial opinion that they have a culture, and that they transmit that culture.
But language is something else, a special "trick", and it goes beyond, and indeed doesn't require vocalization at all -- as a deaf person or for that matter, any post written on Slashdot will demonstrate.
If we aren't "hearing" language from chimps -- and we've been hoping and listening for years -- it's most likely because chimps don't have language -- at least in the sense we mean language when we describe what any normal human three-year old can do.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant...
Obviously we didn't spread it well enough...
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight