User:Laurarenee512/Great ape language

Kanzi
Kanzi, a bonobo, is believed to understand more human language than any other nonhuman animal in the world. Kanzi learned english as his primal language by simply living a life guided by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and his adoptive mother, Matata. Kanzi learned to communicate to humans using a lexigram board, pushing buttons which had symbols that stand for words. The board is wired to a computer, so the word is then vocalized out loud by the computer. This helps Kanzi develop his vocabulary and enables him to communicate with researchers.

One day, Rumbaugh used the computer to say to Kanzi, "Can you make the dog bite the snake?" It is believed Kanzi had never heard this sentence before. In answering the question, Kanzi searched among the objects present until he found a toy dog and a toy snake, put the snake in the dog's mouth, and used his thumb and finger to close the dog's mouth over the snake. Using this method, Kanzi is able to create "sentence-like strings", using about 150 produced lexigram signs, to communicate with his caretakers. Kanzi has answered more than 500 english-spoken sentences produced by his caretakers, all much like the original, "Can you make the dog bite the snake?". In 2001, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, writing in the Financial Times, observed that Kanzi was "asked by an invisible interrogator through head-phones (to avoid cueing) to identify 35 different items in 180 trials. His success rate was 93 percent." In further testing, beginning when he was $7 1/2$ years old, Kanzi was asked 416 complex questions, responding correctly over 74% of the time. Kanzi has been observed verbalizing a meaningful noun to his sister.

Kanzi highly relied on the lexigrams for communication, and frequently uses it to specify where he wanted to go, or an item he wanted to have. He did this by expressing his goal(location or object) first, and his action last(go, chase, carry, give, etc.) last. This notified researchers that Kanzi's way of communicating was different from that of spoken english, especially because Kanzi would communicate many of his action words using simple gestures. In addition, Kanzi was frequently seen linking two action words together using the lexigrams, like " 'I Tickle,' `Chase Hide,' or `Chase Bite' ". These word combinations aren't necessarily structured in a way that humans would use spoken english, but they closely resemble lists, consisting of preferred actions, in preferred order of Kanzi's social play. Because of this inconsistency of Kanzi's use of language with the spoken english language, many question “Whether Kanzi actually crosses the boundary with true language...".

Koko
Main article: Koko (gorilla)

Dr. Francine "Penny" Patterson, a student of the Gardners, in 1972 began an ongoing program to teach ASL to a lowlands gorilla named Koko. Unlike the Gardners she did not limit her English speech around Koko, and as a result Koko was reported to understand approximately 1,000 ASL signs and 2,000 English words. Her results were similar to the Gardners' results with chimpanzees; although the gorilla learned a large number of signs, she never understood grammar or symbolic speech, and did not display any cognition beyond that of a 2–3 year old human child.

Approximately 71 hours of video were taken recording Kokos interactions and learning behaviors. While Kokos ability to successfully produce language has been argued among researchers, behaviors that appear to mimic speech, such as breathing heavily into a telephone or other learned physical gestures have been labeled as intentional but ultimately not communicative. From a biological standpoint, nonhuman primates lack the correct anatomy necessary to produce the same audible speech found in humans, however vocalizations, gestures, and expressions remain a common form used to communicate in the natural world. Koko learned and was taught to compensate for this by creating cues to emulate sounds replicating speech and through her use of visual indicators.

Nim Chimpsky

Main article: Nim Chimpsky

Linguistic critics challenged the animal trainers to demonstrate that Washoe was actually using language and not symbols. The null hypothesis was that the Gardners were using conditioning to teach the chimpanzee to use hand formations in certain contexts to create desirable outcomes, and that they had not learned the same linguistic rules that humans innately learn.

In response to this challenge, the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky (whose name is a play on linguist Noam Chomsky) was taught to communicate using sign language in studies led by Herbert S. Terrace, documented in his 1987 books.

Nim was taken from his mother at a young age by Terrace and put into a household of hippy-like people who had no background with sign language, nor did they use it. Nim was treated as more of a house pet than a wild animal. During his time in the house, Nim’s family gave him access to illegal substances, such as marijuana and alcohol, and didn’t think twice about letting him use them.

Nim’s experience did not begin as an observational experience due to the fact that there were no log books kept at this point in his life.

It wasn’t until Nim was introduced to Laura Pettito that he began his journey with learning sign language. To no surprise, Nim was almost unresponsive to sign language unless there was something in it for him if he did the sign.

With tons of observers and trainers guiding Nim in his learning of sign language, the observations gave clear insight on what the outcome truly was. The trainers noted that Nim had made over 20,000 sequences, only for Terrace to disprove that by noticing that Nim was merely repeating signs done by his trainers. This observation had Terrace believing that, in total, Nim knew about 125 signs.

After years of being a test subject, Nim became aggressive and extremely dangerous to those around him. He would attack the researchers, sending some of them to the hospital. He bit Pettito, which led to her having to get 37 stitches, and he tore off another woman’s cheek.

Overall, the experiment done on Nim didn’t show us a lot. Through all of the tests it is seen that Nim merely copied the signs shown to him. This experiment also showed that non-human primates are able to memorize the outcome of certain things and if they enjoy what they get from it, they are more likely to reciprocate it because their memory shows them that they can get what they want with certain signs. Due to that fact that there was little to no meaningful outcomes from this project, we really only figured out that non-human primates are able to memorize things with different outcomes and they have a higher likelihood of becoming dangerous and aggressive when taken out of their natural habitat at a young age.

Attempts to Mimic Human Speech and Communication
Main article: Talking animal

Great apes mimicking human speech is rare although some have attempted to do so, and Viki, a chimpanzee, is one of them. During the 1940s and 1950s, Keith and Catherine Hayes of the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology began working with a chimpanzee named Viki in an attempt to get her to mimic human speech. After undergoing months of speech therapy, Viki became their success story. Viki learned to say the words: “mama”, “papa”, “cup” and “up”. Over the years she learned to say up to seven words. Viki was extremely intelligent and like many other nonhuman primates, would lead people to where she wanted to go as well as move the hands of people onto objects she wanted them to manipulate. However, she would rarely point to objects that she wanted, instead she would use signs to indicate what she wanted to do. For example, when she wanted to help with ironing she would move her hand back and forth above the ironing board. This experiment with Viki would inspire other researchers to conduct similar experiments.

While communication appears to be a consistent feature utilized by all animals, the tendency toward autonomic behaviors and displays remains the most common among primates. Behaviors like body posture, facial expressions, vocalizations and scent production have been observed to convey information to other animals revealing emotions or alerts about potential danger. Behavior is also used to solidify hierarchical social rankings. In the natural world, affiliative behaviors such as grooming are used to promote group cohesion and relational status among primates. In contrast, displays of aggression can also create divisions among groups.