http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...rld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=156967 University chimp amazes scientists with own 'words' By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 02/01/2003) A chimpanzee has challenged the widely held view that animals do not have language by making up its own words from scratch. Kanzi, an adult bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee kept at Georgia State University, Atlanta, has come up with four distinct sounds for the things closest to his heart - banana, juice, grapes and yes. Although the choice of words may be a little predictable, it is the first report of an ape making sounds that seem to have the same meaning across different situations. The findings have astonished ape experts, who believe Kanzi has come the closest yet to mastering a simple form of speech. Kanzi has grown up among people and is skilled at communicating with symbols. It understands some spoken English and can respond to simple phrases such as "do you want a banana?", New Scientist reports today. But its language trainers, Jared Taglialatela and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, discovered that he also made distinct noises during their "conversations". The team studied 100 hours of video tapes of Kanzi. They were most interested in situations where the chimp's meaning was obvious, such as when it was pointing to the symbol for grapes or eating a banana. The researchers found four noises used by Kanzi in different contexts. Dr Taglialatela said: "We haven't taught him this. He's doing it all on his own." Kanzi's "word" for yes stayed the same across a whole range of emotions, suggesting that the noises were not simply the result of differences in the chimp's emotional state. Kanzi is the latest in a line of primates to challenge the conventional view that animals have no language. Language used to be defined as symbolic communication until another chimpanzee, Washoe, learned to communicate in American Sign Language. Since then, the definition has been refined to put more emphasis on syntax and less on symbols. The researchers are now trying to discover whether Kanzi is imitating human speech. But they will not consider the chimp to be communicating using the sounds until other chimps respond to the noises.
I'm not an evolutionary expert. But here are some random thoughts. If animals are always evolving towards language, then what are humans evolving towards? It seems that we've always been communicating. The question is how to communicate more effectively. If you answer this question then you might have some insight into where evolution might take us. So what can we improve on as a communicating species? 1. Increase the Speed of "verbal" communication 2. Drecrease the effort involved 3. Holding multiple conversations at the same time 4. Increase our memory 5. Ways to physically grasp technology or tools That's all I can think about off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are a lot more. If you can solve these problems you can imagine where human communication might be in the future. Of course these changes would need to be physical in order to call it evolution. Technology does not count in my opinion. However it does provide a role in evolution. Technology could eradicate the need for some physical changes by providing tangible solutions to them. And that begs the question as to whether or not technology inhibits or helps evolution. Or neither. Maybe it just drives how we evolve. I guess we don't really know. One major gap has been our ability physically to access our tools of communication. We have phones, computers, and what not, but we always have to work to use them. How would our body physically adapt to using these tools. And would it possibly render parts of our body useless. If lips were no longer neccessary to communicate would they still exist. How would we kiss? I don't know, but I thought I would jot some of this down so I could think about it some more later.
More from the primate world. ____________________ Orangutans Said to Exhibit Hallmarks of Culture By CAROL KAESUK YOON, The New York Times Orangutans, those red-haired, knuckle-dragging apes, are loping today into the upper echelons of the hominid hierarchy. According to research reported in the journal Science, they exhibit what was until very recently considered a uniquely human attribute: culture. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of thousands of hours of observations from six different sites in the wild, an international team of scientists found evidence that orangutan groups differ in everything from bedtime rituals to eating habits to sexual practices — patterns of behavior, passed from generation to generation, that scientists call culture. Other researchers reported four years ago that chimpanzees differ in the way they groom one another, hunt and eat ants and so on. Scientists say the new work suggests that the two remaining great ape species, gorillas and bonobos, are likely to have culture as well and that great ape culture dates back at least to the origin of the entire group 14 million years ago. The finding has been of particular interest as orangutans have long been thought to be loners, leaving little possibility for the creation of culture. Yet researchers found that at one site all orangutans gave a Bronx cheer before going to sleep, while at other sites this curious ritual was absent. In some forests, orangutans had a characteristic way of hunting and killing a beast known as the slow loris or extracting seeds from the stinging fruit of the Neesia tree. Yet in other forests where the loris and Neesia were found, orangutans never took these meals. And while in two forests, orangutans enjoyed masturbation using sticks, elsewhere such behavior was unheard of. As is typical whenever scientists aim to award prized attributes of Homo sapiens to other, wilder creatures, there has been heated reaction. Some point out that while unlikely, it is possible that the orangutans behave differently at different sites because of undetected differences in their forest habitat. Some scientists also object in principle to the use of the heavily freighted term culture, which has long been used to denote something peculiarly human — like wearing white rather than black to funerals, say, or shaking hands rather than kissing as a greeting. Further research on orangutan culture may be difficult, however, because the species as a whole is threatened as people steadily encroach on its habitats. But others said that great ape cultures were just the tip of the iceberg. "In the coming 20 years, we will have a host of studies on culture in all sorts of animals," said Dr. Frans de Waal, primatologist at Emory University, saying data have been coming in suggesting cultural differences among rats, birds and even fish. "We will not think of culture as a monolithic thing, but a concept that includes songbirds, the great apes and human culture." The study grew out of a workshop that gathered orangutan researchers who had worked for years in isolation from one another at remote field sites on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the only places orangutans can be found in the wild. "You know your own animals and all of them do particular things," said Dr. Carel van Schaik, biological anthropologist at Duke University and lead author on the paper. "So you think all orangutans do these things. Nobody thought there'd be so much variation between the sites." Dr. van Schaik said there was no evidence of ecological differences or genetic differences that would lead to such differences in behavior. In addition, at sites where orangutans spent more time together there were more of these widespread behaviors, as would be expected with behaviors that can be spread through association. In addition, the closer sites were to one another, the more behaviors those sites shared, again as would be expected. But Dr. Bennett Galef, animal behaviorist at McMaster University, cautioned that it can be difficult to decipher what is causing differences in behavior among populations in the wild. For example, in a classic example of chimp culture, chimpanzees are known to use very different methods for extracting ants from ant nests in eastern and western Africa. But in a recent study, researchers reported finding a new group of chimpanzees that will use either method, depending on how aggressive the ant they are hunting is. Dr. Galef said the finding suggests that even this classic chimp cultural divide might have a hidden ecological explanation as simple as the difference in what kinds of ants are available to chimps in different areas. Most work so far has relied on simply observing animals in the wild. Dr. Galef said the only way to definitively answer many of the key remaining questions will be through experiments in the field. Unfortunately, researchers say some of the newly uncovered cultures have likely already been destroyed. Dr. van Schaik said that one site in Sumatra, home of the goodnight Bronx cheer and the hunting of the slow loris, has been devastated over the past several years by an intense wave of illegal logging despite being within a national park. Another of his long-term study sites in Borneo has been devastated by civil war and is still too dangerous to return to. But even if he were able to go back, Dr. van Schaik said, "probably all the orangutans we knew there are gone."
I'm not entirely sure animals are always evolving towards language. Complex language isn't neccesary for basic survival among animals, so most do with what they have now. The monkey's words were trained, so it's more of a learned trait, like a dog that recognizes his name, than one that evolved. What that means is that they're smarter than they put up to be even if we treat them like mindless brutes... I read an article awhile back claiming that the average size of our heads won't be any larger than it is now because the waists of women became slimmer as the result of humans standing on hindlegs. Maybe we'll get egg shaped heads like those Roswell Aliens...
If I could edit that last post, I sincerely would. What was I thinking? It is completely falacious to suggest that the president has come up with his own words. My apologies.
does this count as paying you back for the softball you threw up to me when you said as soon as the conservatives got back from being out of town we would all get on and say that something was just "spin??"
Jeff, we'll discover what we've lost. And there will be people saying it was all our fault... that we didn't protect the wild places of the earth because of our greed, short-sightedness and stupidity. They will be right.
No species has a goal that they evolve towards. It is whatever helps it to survive. Its not like in the movies or anything. A species doesn't pick and choose what it wants and what it doesn't. There are even negative evolutionary traits, such as ones that can lead to the demise of a species.
how exactly did the words "enjoyed" and "masturbation using sticks" get placed in the same sentence. damn those female orangutans must've not been putting out at all.
You just scored me major Brownie points with my old prof who is going to write me a reccomendation! Thanks MadMax, I owe you one. Here is his website if you are interested in Philosophy of Mind. Look on his 320 page. http://grimpeur.tamu.edu/~colin/
