R.I.P. Koko

[downbeatplumb]

It is sad to loose such an ambassador for the protection of endangered species. I do find it funny that people believe they taught a gorilla sign language, gorillas communicate that way in the wild all the time, just as many animals do. If we were to study them more in their own back yards we might be able to understand what they are communicating to each other, then apply it to ourselves to communicate with them. Why is it that man believes the animals need to do it our way when they have had a very efficient way of communicating for a long time. I've worked with dogs for a long time and I've learned that working with them instead of forcing a complete change by them is far better and gets quicker results. You know it is we who have the superior brain, you would think that we could figure out ways to understand them in their natural ways. I can assure you your dog knows more about you than you do your dog.

GC

The idea of teaching them sign language was precisely to show that it -could- be done..that this was not a uniquely human thing.  Further, as a way of gaining insight into their internal states, to see if that was a uniquely human thing.  This is where the researchers have so far failed to find what they might have hoped for.  Beyond criticisms of kokos handler and how she had a habit of interpreting for koko...what we;ve noticed in these experiments is that the subjects aren;t really conversationalists.  They use language in what seems to be an almost purely utilitarian manner.  We;ve yet to see them spontaneously point up to the clouds and ask profoundly compluicated (and unrelated but conceptually adjacent) questions about them..as our own children often do.  Or to chatter in sign while waiting in a line like we do at the checkout aisle.  

It;s trying to figure out whether or not other apes are like us in those regards that isn;t best served by learning their language, and particularly so if they use their own language in the same way that they appear to be using ours.  We want to know if they possess concepts or internal states like ours..and they would have no rerason to know what those were unless we explained them to them in our manner of description..and then asked them what they were....and more fundamentally little confidence in whatever answer we got unless we could demonstrate unambiguosly that they understood the concept and related it back to us as we;d related it to them.   Fun aisde..before we taught them to sign, we tried to teach them to talk...and the people who did so were perplexed as to why it never panned out.  Now, ofc, we know why and the idea that a researcher wouldn;t seems as preposterous as the idea that gorillas dont communicate in a language of their own.....but we have to remember that these experiments are what established those things in the first place.  It hasn;t always been a known known.