Page 26 - 2007 DT 12 Issues

Aspects of Intelligence communication with humans. strung sounds just thrown in and that
At the Chimpanzee and Human they were not using some other rule to
umans are reported to be the Communication Institute at Central distinguish the strings. These studies
smartest animals on the planet. Washington University a family of five were the first foray into complex rule
HWe design sophisticated tools chimps has mastered ASL, which they learning for a nonhuman animal.
to shape our environment, make a use to communicate with their family Although some humans don’t know
living and entertain ourselves. Com- members as well as their trainers. At which end of a hammer to grab, tool
munications are our forte—we speak, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. use among animals is well documented.
gesticulate, and use our cell phones. Yet orangutans are being trained in a lan- No one, however, could have predicted
we share our planet with other creatures guage designed specifically for them, that such behavior would hark back to
that display unsuspected aspects of in- using flash cards and touch screen prehistoric times. Archaeologist Julio
telligence. Though we’re not likely to computers. They are free to commu- Mercader of the University of Calgary
be unseated as Masters of the Universe nicate with each other and their train- in Alberta excavated three riverbank
just yet, we may be obliged to consider ers—or not. sites in Tai National Park, Ivory Coast,
that many of the species we take for At a lesser level, many other uncovering 200 primitive stones used for
granted exhibit mental capabilities that animals, too, communicate with each smashing the tough shells of nuts and
may have implications regarding our other using a variety of “vocabulary.” seeds. In a blind test, flaked stones were
own evolutionary history. Chickadees signal danger with a range judged by scientists to have been used
Humans believe that what really sets of vocal sounds that differentiate the by humans. The unflaked stones, which
us apart from them is our language and degree of danger and its were similar to the
our cognitive capacity. It isn’t so much source. Squirrels have large hammering
the development of language that sepa- an even more complex stones used by
rates us, but that we have evolved the “language,” according chimps at a nearby
physical mechanisms that make speech to the journal Animal site to crack nuts,
(and language) possible. Which came Behavior. Whistles, were probably used
first is a matter of debate. Nonetheless, chirps and chucks, by chimps at least
it is becoming harder to ignore that “lan- along with pitch, con- 4,300 years ago,
guage” may take many forms. stitute syllables that based on starch
Consider the early experiments differentiate a gamut grains (predomi-
with primates in communication and of warnings, from nantly from nuts)
cognition that began in the 1960s and a mild “heads-up” extracted from pits
‘70s. No one who has seen films of to “every squirrel for himself” panic. in the stones. Mercader predicts that
Koko the gorilla will ever forget her Whales, dolphins and elephants are “this type of simple bashing technol-
obvious intelligence and her ability to highly social animals that communi- ogy goes back to a common ancestor of
communicate through American Sign cate with their kin in ways we don’t chimps and humans around 6 million
Language (ASL) to express her human- understand. Dolphins have learned to years ago.”
like range of emotions. She even learned “understand” our language, yet theirs The ability to use tools is shown to
to understand spoken English. While she is indecipherable to us. be inherited. Techniques learned through
lacked the physical capacity to verbal- Starlings have learned to pick out socialization or simple trial and error
ize, she (and others like her) learned to patterns once proposed as unique to the have created a natural ability in pri-
communicate with us and each other. A grammars of human languages. In two mates, and probably in humans, as well.
landmark program developed by Beatrix 2004 studies by the University of Cali- Even with monkey species that don’t
and Allen Gardener of the University of fornia, San Diego, they were lab trained use tools in the wild, lab studies show
Nevada, Reno involved the chimpanzee to distinguish between sounds with that macaques, for example, possess an
Washoe, who eventually learned to use nested—or recursive—elements versus innate neural capacity for manipulating
240 ASL signs with which she com- those strung together in a “laundry list.” objects that encourages tool use.
municated. Today there are a number of Tests revealed that the birds were truly Chimps, orangutans and several
such programs that are moving past mere recognizing recursion rather than other monkey species use specific tools in the

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