Can monkeys really communicate with us?

 

It is widely accepted that apes are the smartest creatures after humans. In addition it’s also strongly believed that humans are descendants of apes, altered by long evolution processes. Nowadays scientists are trying to understand whether monkeys would eventually gain human-like intellect, and be able to understand and even speak our language.

Almost every decade scientists discover new findings about monkeys. Probably the most interesting question that they strive to answer is the fact of teaching them communication skills. The most obvious answer to the question of what distinguishes man from the apes: is the ability to speak. It is believed that people have learned to produce and understand speech at a late stage of evolution when the ways of their ancestors and the ancestors of apes diverged. However, discussions on this subject do not stop, and some experts advocate the view that not only humans can communicate. After years of research Lisa Heimbauer from Georgia State University concluded that the ability to develop speech was observed both: in ancient humans and apes. “It’s the amount of practice, and not some special properties of the person. We, simply from our birth, learn to understand what we say, and reproduce these words, we simply have more experience.  Monkeys also possess the language abilities, and can develop the appropriate skills, “- said Heimbauer.

According to the most common theory, communication occurred simultaneously with the joint work. Primitive people had to somehow communicate with each other and transmit important messages to hunt effectively or simply to warn relatives of potential dangers. It is believed that at this time, our ancestors began to develop a more sophisticated speech, rather than aboriginal sounds. It is worth noting that the primitive alarm system exists in monkeys as well.  Certain sound or gesture could mean particular concept. People, on the other hand, can build a sequence of sounds or gestures, where meaning is made up of their set, and every single element can mean nothing.  For example if in a word, phrase or a whole sentence a certain sound is distorted, meaning is still clear. This ability exists among chimpanzees as well, proved Heimbauer.

Chimpanzee named Kanzi from birth lives among people. At the moment, she is already 25 years old. To communicate with researchers, Kanzi uses a special board on which the characters are drawn, each of which links to a specific concept. When Kanzi hears any known word or concept, she accurately indicates the correct character. Overall she is capable of recognizing somewhat 128 different concepts.

During the experiment, carried out on Kanzi, scientists played distorted audio words and she had to choose one the corresponding figure out of four.  Sound was distorted either by addition of noise or by lowering the pitch. Surprisingly, the monkey correctly identified 55% of the words, distorted by noise and 40% by pitch lowering. When the same experiment was conducted on 3.5 years old children, the results were almost the same: 65% of correct answers for noise distortion, and 40% for the tone.

Although the research conducted by Heimbauer is supported by strong data and arguments, I don’t consider recognition of verbal concepts as a developed language. Yes, obviously chimpanzee Kanzi, turned out to be a very smart animal, recognizing more than 100 concepts, but these experiments do not necessarily prove that communication might occur between animals and humans. In her experiment, Lisa Heimbauer proved that chimpanzees are capable of efficiently perform the given commands and recognize concepts, but this applies to other “smart” animals as well: For example, recently I read an article that octopus Candid could identify patterns simply from observation. Overall answering the main question of my blog- “can monkeys eventually communicate with humans” it is not impossible. The recent study conducted neurobiologist Genevieve Konopka and her lab group at the University of California–Los Angeles examined a gene called FOXP2, which is linked to human language. The same gene is found in monkeys, however due to mutations of the gene, their brain cannot operate the same way as ours.

Sources:

Kramer, By Miriam. “‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’: Why Apes Can’t Speak Like Humans.” LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 17 July 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2015. <http://www.livescience.com/46853-can-apes-speak-like-humans.html>.

Viegas, Jennifer. “Smart Chimp Gets Speech like Humans.” Discovery News. N.p., 31 Oct. 2011. Web. 10 Oct. 2015. <http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/chimpanzee-human-speech-111031.htm>.