A chimpanzee raised among humans may have developed the ability to speak, claims a group of American scientists. The findings were published in the magazine "New Scientist".
A chimpanzee raised among humans may have developed the ability to speak, claims a group of American scientists. The findings were published in the magazine "New Scientist".
Kanzi, an adult chimpanzee, was raised at the University of Georgia in Atlanta, and like many other primates, he can communicate by pointing at symbols. However, researchers have recently noticed that Kanzi also produces gentle sounds when socializing with humans.
After watching Kanzi for many hours, Dr. Jared Taglialtala and Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, were able to pinpoint four distinct sounds that accompanied certain actions. The actions, and apparently also the sounds, are equivalent to "banana", "grapes", "juice", and "yes".
The chimpanzee produced the same sound in other contexts as well. Although the researchers thought that the chimpanzee's emotional state might be the cause of the sounds, the sound produced for "yes" sounded the same even when Kanzi was in different moods.
Dr. Taglialtala said about the findings: "We didn't teach him this - he does it himself. The fact that emotion is involved in the matter does not rule out the possibility that he follows rules that have some cognitive component."
The question of what actually constitutes a "language" arouses controversy in the academic world. Some linguists believe that symbolic communication - shared by many chimpanzees - also constitutes language. But many others say that some syntactic structure is needed for communication to be so defined.
The "words" of the monkey Kenzi may disprove the claim that monkeys do not speak
by Tamara Traubman
Chimpanzees / According to the researchers, the bonobo communicates by pointing to symbols and makes certain sounds that may be words
Kenzie is a 22-year-old bonobo monkey who lives in a monkey house at the University of Georgia in Atlanta. Even as a young teenager, Kenzi learned to communicate with humans by pointing to symbols representing words. Now the researchers who work with him claim that he may have developed the ability to "speak"; According to them, certain sounds he makes may be "words".
The researchers have not yet published their findings in a scientific journal - something that is considered a touchstone for scientific claims - but first details about the research were published yesterday in the American weekly "New Scientist".
The researchers, Dr. Sue Savage and her colleagues, told the weekly that Kenzi makes sounds, "which are probably words he invented for 'banana', 'grapes', 'juice' and 'yes'".
They admit that the voices may not be words, but a reflection of a mood accompanying the encounter with these objects. However, according to the researchers, the sound of "yes" remained the same in different cases, even when Kenzi was subject to different moods.
Kenzi's connection to human language begins when he is six months old. So he came with his mother, Matatea, to the Center for Language Research at the University of Georgia. Since then, Kenzi has been exposed to human care and the company of humans: every day the researchers would work with his mother and try to teach her to use the keyboard, on the keys of which symbols appear. Using the keyboard, the monkey can communicate, answer the researchers with "yes" and "no" or say, for example, that he wants to play.
Kenzi stayed with his mother in training, but showed no interest in studies. "He would ignore them completely, or interfere in any way possible," Dr. Savage wrote in a published report on Kenzi. "He didn't seem interested in learning a language using a keyboard, although he liked the lights on the keyboard and often tried to chase the symbols that appeared on its projectors."
Other monkeys who participated in similar studies were able to learn to communicate using the keyboard, but the older Matata made almost no progress in her studies. Kenzi's lack of interest doesn't seem encouraging either. "At the time, the bonobos seemed to have much less linguistic ability than their chimpanzee relatives," said Dr. Savage. However, as he matured, to the researchers' surprise, Kenzi began to use the keyboard keys correctly. Like children learning to speak without being taught to do so directly, Savage said, "Kenzie actually already knew (the signs) before we taught them directly."
More surprising than Kenzi's use of the keyboard was the fact that he understood spoken English. When he heard a word, he pointed to the key representing it on the keyboard; When the investigators asked him for requests, he responded to them. Another time, when his nanny asked him on the phone what to bring him when she came to visit him, he used the keyboard to ask for candy and a pill.
When she came to visit him, she brought him the candy and asked: Do you remember asking me for something else? Kenzi typed on the keyboard: Yes, bullet.
However, recently the researchers noticed that Kenzi makes certain soft sounds, which repeat themselves each time in similar contexts. The team studied 100 hours of videotapes and analyzed the sounds he made at various times. They chose situations where Kenzi's actions were unambiguous: for example, when he ate a banana, pointed to a "grapes" symbol, or responded to a request to leave the cage. The researchers identified four such unique voices. They are now studying other bonobos and analyzing the sounds Kenzi makes to see if he is trying to imitate human speech.
The findings, says researcher Dr. Jared Tallittle, may once again challenge the long-held belief that animals have no language. However, the definition of the concept of language is controversial. Linguists believe that communication in symbols - which chimpanzees and bonbons have achieved - is not enough to meet the definition and that some grammatical ability is also required.
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The article focuses on primates. It is interesting to note that there are parrots that know how to say much more than a few words, and really talk, as evidenced by their nickname: talking parrots.
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