What can other great apes really do?

[Alex K]

I have here a compilation of essays for the great ape project, edited I think by Singer, in support of giving our closest relatives more rights and protection. Among others it contains reports by people who have worked with apes like Kanzi or Koko, and they report quite astonishing feats especially when it comes to communication in sign language. On the other hand, there are plenty of sceptics who think that while those who work with these apes may not be consciously lying, they may have fallen pray to biases. This situation would then be similar in nature to the facilitated communication fiasco, where facilitators have falsly claimed to be able to enable disabled people express themselves by holding their hand while writing. Here, the facilitators unconsciously started writing their own messages fo the disabled person, providing e.g. parents with false hope and sometimes dangerous bogus accusations of abuse. Anyways, my point is that it is established how people can be radically misled when trying to communicate with partners who have limited to no ability to express themselves.

Like many others, I would really love if great apes could communicate with us to the extent some claim, but I am skeptical.

What do you all think, how much of this is hype and delusion, and how much of it is real?

[Exian]

Can you provide the reading material?

[Alex K]

Let me check! I have it in book form, but I'll try to gather some links...

[Pyrrho]

I think the signing apes are real.  People are not as different from other animals as they often like to believe.  I think the idea that humans are totally different is a bias from Christianity that has contaminated western thinking.

That said, you are right that some of the claims people make about communication are bogus, and that the "Facilitated Communication" of people is a bunch of crap.  And so one must be careful about these things.  But in the case of the apes, the people do not hold the hands of the apes while signing.  Everyone should have pretty well known from the start that the Facilitated Communication was just nonsense.

For a start on animal communication:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language

So, to recap, I think, but am not sure, that some apes have been trained to use some sign language.  But the Facilitated Communication is ridiculous.

There certainly isn't any good fundamental, philosophical reason to reject the idea that nonhuman animals can use language.  Testing it, though, is troublesome, as their language abilities are likely quite different from humans, and would presumably vary considerably, based both on mental ability and the way they perceive the world.

[Hatshepsut]

On the other hand, there are plenty of sceptics who think that while those who work with these apes may not be consciously lying, they may have fallen pray to biases. This situation would then be similar in nature to the facilitated communication fiasco...

I don't think Susan Savage-Rumbaugh's "Ape Talk" board is an instance of facilitated communication. Sue isn't sticking her paw on the ape's hand to guide its choices of lexigrams. The apes know how to communicate using these boards not only with their keepers, but with some of their fellow apes.

There is a real question of whether what the apes are doing should be called language in the human sense of that word. Apes frankly aren't very good grammarians. They are aware the buttons represent things and actions, that two or three buttons can be combined to qualify or connect things or actions more precisely than a single button does, and that the order the buttons are pressed matters. These are elements of language, syntax for instance: After all we can't say our speech faculty has no precedents in the animal world.

But "Ape Talk" isn't a true language. Noam Chomsky and other linguists stress that grammar is generative. A sentence not only conveys a message, but it has a structure based on implicit rules such that the listener can tell whether it is grammatical or not. "John walked a fine line" is grammatical to English speakers while "John walk fine line" is not, even though the latter sentence is syntactically in order. English requires function words like "a" and functional morphology like -ed or -s to be inserted here. Words and phrases in a real language have gender, number, tense, aspect, mode, and so on that are crucial to meaning yet absent from the "Ape Talk."

[abaris]

Like many others, I would really love if great apes could communicate with us to the extent some claim, but I am skeptical.

There's several great apes being able to communicate. There's Koko, a 40something gorialla female, there has been MIchael, who died in 2000. Both have learned sign language and you can see there story on kokoflix on youtube. The expirement is discontinued because the supervisor, who also trained both came to the conclusion of it being unethical. Also there Kanzy, a Bonobo, who communicates via computer symbols. There has also been an Orang Utan, who was able to communicate with sign language. His is a rather sad story with kind of a happy ending, since he's now found a family.

But it doesn't end with great apes. There have been numerous experiments on animal cognition with ravens, rats even and most of all with dogs. Brian Hare is one of the leading researchers on dog cognition and the findings are amazing.

[Regina]

Is better communication something that seems exclusive to mammals though? It seems like only mammals (including whales and dolphins) have superior ways of communicating compared to other animals?

[Exian]

Is it the Diana monkeys that are able to form basic sentences with different sounds? I remember seeing a program on them some time ago. Same program showed lying monkeys for personal gain. Must google.

[vorlon13]

I recall Clever Hans, an equine mathematician. Took quite a while to figure out just what he was doing. I'd advise extreme caution and very careful experimental protocol with the great ape communication tests.

Signing a message to one of them alone, then later watching it sign the message to another test subject, who then demonstrates having received the knowledge would be convincing, assuming everything was set up properly.

Have any experiments like that been done ?


For instance:

sign to Koko (or whichever) that Kanzi has a treat available under the rock that is next to the ball. Kanzi (or whichever) can then be allowed to see Koko thru glass, but not hear. Cameras can watch Koko. If she signs " look under rock ball there, numbnuts" and that happens, you'd have something pretty impressive.

(I'm more impressed with them communicating amongst themselves via a learned human technique like signing, than I am with them communicating with humans)

[Cyberman]

There was one - sorry I don't know the details - who could draw pictures. One looked like a squiggle of straight lines, which through signing was described as a ball. Apparently, the picture wasn't a straight depiction of a ball, but of the motion of a ball bouncing. I found that terribly moving.