The language of monkeys that baffled scientists
The similarities between apes and humans have always attracted the attention of scientists and caressed their imaginations, and in the body of the following report, Mary Colwell monitors the differences between the two, which are even more exciting.
"When you look into a monkey's eye, you catch a glimpse of the intelligence and gaze of a self-aware animal that seeks to evaluate your behavior," said Charlotte Uhlenbrock, a biologist who has spent years observing monkey behavior in their natural environment. "I always ask, 'What do they understand when they look at us?'"
Monkeys and humans are very similar, and it is impossible not to ask the question about the differences between us and our closest creatures on earth.
In 1896, R.L. Garner wrote, "No other creature is so enchanting as these little dolls of the human race."
In fact, Garner was one of the first to actively seek an explanation for the differences by living with chimpanzees in West Africa. He noted a physical resemblance, as well as social boundaries, feelings, and care for the young.
One of the most puzzling things was the language element used by these animals. The monkeys seem to talk to each other, but what do they say and why?
Garner wrote, "The sounds emanating from these monkeys have all the elements and characteristics of speech. The speaker is aware of the intended meaning of the sound he emits, and uses it for specific purposes to convey a specific idea to the other party to whom he speaks, and the sound is always issued to a specific monkey, in addition to the fact that the monkey The speaker always looks at the monkey speaking to him, and regulates the loudness of the sound in proportion to the situation for which the sound comes out, and he also knows the value of the sound as a medium for conveying the idea. These and many other facts show that they actually speak.
Monkey language has captivated our imaginations for centuries.
On June 1, 1698, Edward Tyson, the most famous anatomist of his day, appeared before the Royal Society to present his findings on the anatomy of a pygmy chimpanzee.
This animal arrived in England from Angola and lived for two months before contracting an infection after damaging its jaw from falling on the deck of a ship.
Tyson's findings were published in his book, "Anatomy of a Pygmy in Comparison with a Young Ape, an Evolving Ape, and a Man," with an article on ancient pygmies. Along with measurements and descriptions of muscles and bones, he told an interesting story of how the ship's crew treated the animal. It wore clothes and ate the same food on the same level. The table and also lying on the bed. It is an animal that really baffled the ship's sailors. They (apes) like us seem to be the closest beings to us, and this reflects the essence of human qualities within them."
One particularly important finding was the presence of vocal cords, if Tyson detected minuscule differences between the throats of chimpanzees and humans.
He said: "It is very similar to those found in humans." So why don't you talk?" One of the old theories says that if the chimpanzee allows us humans to listen to him while he speaks, we will enslave him, so these animals remain silent in the presence of man. Dora to fall into the yoke of enslavement.
More than a century after the story of the pygmy chimpanzee that Tyson wrote about, another monkey was brought to Bristol, Britain, on a slave ship and taught how to drink gin and smoke.
The monkey "Happy Jerry" was sitting outside the Exeter Stock Exchange in the British capital, London, and was very popular, and they invited him to have tea with the king.
And if the idea of \u200b\u200bthe dwarf chimpanzee narrated by Tyson, who was dressed in clothes and smoking "Jerry" the hookah, is laughable these days, we must remember the tea advertisements for "PJ Tips" in the seventies of the last century, when the idea of advertising was presented during a tea party for a group of chimpanzees wearing Boys and girls clothes.
Our view of monkeys has evolved and changed over time and has been associated with philosophy, religion and science.
In the seventeenth century the veil between science, superstition and religion was very thin. The animal was not an object subject to description, but an entity embodied in our view of the world and our place in it.
For Tyson, the reason the chimpanzee did not speak was that it was not a rational being. "Humans are different from animals because we have things that we call the mind, and of course it's not in the body, it's a spiritual essence, so the fact that chimpanzees have vocal cords is what should allow them to speak, but does not speak, reinforces the status of man and his uniqueness as a rational creature.
The idea that we differ from other life on earth because of some spiritual characteristics may seem an unacceptable conclusion to scientists today, but we are still making great efforts to discover the similarity and closeness between us and the apes. Therefore, we find in the language a refuge to answer many of our questions.
Garner was the first to attempt to teach chimpanzees to speak, with little success. Subsequent research revealed that baboons, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans are able to communicate through language, but not in the same way.
Sign language
Seventy years ago attempts were made to train monkeys to speak English by taking newborn monkeys into a home and raising them with a human baby. Over time, the chimpanzee surpassed the child in terms of physical ability, but he could only pronounce some words very poorly. And the child at that age had already been able to pronounce hundreds of words.
The experiment concluded that the mouth and throat of chimpanzees cannot make sounds in the same way as we do, and in the wild they make sounds when they feel happy, and non-verbal communication is more important for daily life activities.
This led to the emergence of an area of new research that relies on the teaching of sign language, specifically the American Sign Language "AMISLAN".
This is a turning point in understanding apes: chimpanzees can quickly learn about 200 words and phrases, and most importantly put words together to form new concepts.
For example, a chimpanzee named "Wachhui" saw a swan in a pond and named it after a mixture of water and bird.
Over the next decades we experimented with chimpanzees in ingenious ways, and the 1970s and 1980s were the golden age for monkey language research.
Chimpanzees learned sign language and how to press buttons with pictures representing words to order food, or to see a movie.
But research on pygmy chimpanzees in particular has shown a great deal of language evolution in this species.
The chimpanzee, Kanzi, seemed to be able to form simple sentences, comment on what he was doing and even say what he intended to do in the future.
Although the famous biologist Robert Sabulski denies that these experiments show anything other than the ability to copy human behavior, language experiments have now stopped entirely.
The past century has witnessed our relationship with apes and their transformation from being mere beasts in the woods to intelligent creatures capable of communicating.
Genetic studies indicate that we are ten times closer to chimpanzees than mice are to rats.
The fact that Tyson's dwarf was eating with a fork and that Jerry could suddenly turn "bad" made us realize that monkeys could have fun with us and be terrified of us at the same time.
The language of monkeys remains an unsolved mystery, but we will spare no effort to explore how close we are to these animals.
Source: websites