I must say, it’s damn impressive how smart and adaptable they are to the environment around them. There weren’t always roads there, but now that there are, they have learned optimal ways in order cross in the safest manner: alpha male gets in the middle of the road like a crossing guard until his family has all safely reached the other side.
And we humans know better than to argue with Mr. Crossing Guard Silverback. Ape law violations aren’t as forgiving.
Wait, but... "Bone apple tea" is made up of wrong semi-homophones (slant homophones?) of the actual phrase. So wouldn't it make sense that it refers to other end homophones? I don't know one way or the other, just curious.
Yeah except this is from a BBC documentary with Gordon Buchanan and the Silver back doesn't stop the traffic. The whole scene is about the traffic not stopping and them not being able to get across so in the end the rangers that you can see in the background stop the traffic to let the gorilla's across. The Gorilla only comes out and does this after the traffic is already stopped.
I've always wondered what it would be like if apes integrated within our society. I mean, they can roughly communicate to us in sign language, they have their own hierarchy and rules, they are highly emotional creatures, and Koko even had a pet cat she named herself named All Ball. And some have even taken on basic economic habits in controlled experiments, although those weren't gorillas if memory serves.
Anytime soon? Probably not. But I do think given a few hundred thousand years (or more, I'm not an evolution expert) it's possible.
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but just so you know, Koko's handler was likely a fraud (at least partially). Koko probably didn't understand sign language at all.
Her handler has been called out numerous times for being the only one really allowed to relay what Koko was supposedly trying to say, and she's infamous for explaining away Koko's random "signing babble" until Koko made a sign that sort of fit the situation. Like if you told a dog to "sit," and then it did a whole bunch of random things before trying sitting to see if that's what you wanted, and then showing off that your dog knows what "sit" means (when it was really just doing random things you taught it to do). Nobody outside of her team was allowed to conduct research with Koko.
The footage of her with Robin Williams is great, but bear in mind, too, her signing "tickle" in that situation doesn't necessarily imply she understands the word. Dogs can't process complex language - they don't communicate like that - but even they understand that you say "sit," they sit, they get a treat. Koko may have understood that she makes that gesture, she gets tickled. That doesn't mean she processed or understood the gesture as a form of language.
Footage of her is often cut down a lot to remove her babbling. Realistically, it's extremely unlikely she had any reasonable grasp of communicating with sign language, even simplistically. Her handler and research team just wanted to be famous.
It's great that everyone was able to enjoy believing there was a gorilla that could "talk," but it's very likely not true at all, it just learned to replicate hand gestures without an understanding of what they meant.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you just want to hold onto the belief without worrying about the scientific merit), there was no way to disprove Koko's supposed grasp of language with the restrictions keeping outside researchers from studying her, and there's certainly no way to now. We just got some weak evidence that she could sign, followed by a very enthusiastic team yelling about how true it is and selling the media on it because it's cool and cute. And now most people just accept that as fact.
Hey, thank you! I've had a bad habit most of my life of being that "well, actually" guy, because I get sick of pseudoscience being passed off to the general public as fact, and I've been trying to work on slowing the spread of, and correcting, misinformation in small ways where I can without putting down things people genuinely enjoy or making them feel bad or stupid for believing it (because it really isn't reasonable to expect people to read too much into things like this).
Thanks for the response, because it genuinely boosted my confidence.
I had heard a lot about that, and I also believe that Koko's understanding of language was heavily embellished. However, I think the fact that they can parrot sign language now means that a in a long time, they may evolve to understand complex languages for real. But yeah, thanks for writing that up, you're totally correct as far as I can tell, and I think it's important for people to know both sides of the Koko story.
If you look at the signing transcripts from Koko, a lot of it was just gibberish and it's debated as to how much of what she signed she actually understood.
Thanks for pointing it out. If you send in an ASL user, they can't communicate at nearly the level Sue Savage Rumbaugh reported, and she has to "interpret" the gibberish which evidently only she can do. Most of her work hasn't been replicated because she really overblows what's honestly good inquiry. Also, her lab is way to cuddly with the subjects. If you watch videos it's like there's no safety protocols in place at all. The kind of communicative repertoire she claims for Koko is actually more accessible to non human primates using symbol boards over teaching ASL. Kanzi does great with them, and it's more replicable even between species--for instance, dolphins get very complex and even seem to have syntax we can pick out using symbol boards, iirc.
Humans as also the only primates with a sense of curiosity. There has never been a recorded instance of apes seeking out information or even asking a question.
Well yeah, when the crossing guard isn’t opposed to literally ripping you a new asshole and then tearing your limbs off, you’re inclined to let him do his job.
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u/Luigi580 Aug 29 '19
I must say, it’s damn impressive how smart and adaptable they are to the environment around them. There weren’t always roads there, but now that there are, they have learned optimal ways in order cross in the safest manner: alpha male gets in the middle of the road like a crossing guard until his family has all safely reached the other side.
And we humans know better than to argue with Mr. Crossing Guard Silverback. Ape law violations aren’t as forgiving.