Animal Communication Module 85

Animal Communication Animals clearly communicate with each other, but is that language? Rumbaugh’s bonobo chimp experiments with Kanzi show that chimps can reach language comprehension of roughly a 2 ½ year old human (pg. 295) Louis Herman trained bottlenose dolphins to respond to sounds and gestures. Irene Pepperberg trained Alex the parrot a 100-word vocabulary and he can answer questions with phrases Karl von Frisch & the dance of the honeybees

Is it Language? – Chimps taught sign language. Washoe (click to learn more) 200 signs New phrases (open eat drink, dirty good) Chimps teaching chimps Nim Chimpsky 20,000 signs, half of which were two-sign combinations. At a first look, his signing appeared to be structured, but in fact most just repetitive. “Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you.” View a quick overview of Washoe & Koko (7 min) View Kanzi the chimp’s ability to understand spoken language (2 min) and use of lexigrams Chimps can also use simple hand signals: ABC News Report (1:30)

Animal Language Play: “If Only They Could Talk” (10:07) from Scientific American Frontiers (Segment #19 on DVD) What is the Clever Hans Effect? How do researchers guard against this? If Time Allows: Play “Animal Language” (14:39) (Segment #27 from The Mind DVD) Watch up to where they discuss the Washoe Project Do animals like Chimps possess language skills? Do Chimps show a culture like that of humans?

Do animals think? Apes & dolphins have shown the ability to recognize themselves in mirrors demonstrating “self-awareness” What Are You Looking At?

Do Animals Think? Using Concepts: Using Tools: Alex the Parrot can identify the color of the four alike objects presented to him when asked, “What color four?” Video 1(3 minutes) Video 2 (2 minutes) Using Tools: Caledonian Crows will use a stick to get to a grub in a tree. Chimps will use a blade of grass to get termites See more examples on pg. 868