Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind
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Acceptance of our biological and cognitive intimacy with the great apes has profound consequences for the boundary wall that was erected between humans and the rest of the animal world. For the wall represented more than biological classification or righteous superiority. It was also a moral boundary. On one side—ours—important rights were conferred, rights to freedom and justice; on the other side—theirs—rights to freedom and justice were disallowed. It is, for instance, illegal to perform medical experimentation on a brain-dead human, while such activities are perfectly acceptable on a conscious chimpanzee. If we accede to the logic of what we now know about our self-aware, symbol-using biological relatives, then the boundary must be shifted to include the great apes on our side; and this includes a shift in the moral boundary, too. The moral boundary, artificially erected by us, is no longer defensible.
What if apes were granted something of a semi-human legal status? What if their emotions, intellect, and consciousness were to be widely judged at least morally equivalent to that of children who suffer cognitive impairments? All the data we have gathered over the past twenty years at the Language Research Center while working side by side with such children and with apes increasingly support this view.
What would be the implications of such a view? We certainly would not put these children in a zoo to be gawked at as examples of nature, nor would we permit medical experimentation to be conducted with them. Behavioral experimentation would be permitted only to the degree that it could be expected to enrich and aid their lives. Nor would we put them in a reserve where they could lead a natural life, doing just as they pleased. On the other hand, we can hardly argue for mainstreaming apes as is currently popular to press for with such children. Apes would not quite fit in our society, as their physical prowess is far beyond that of our own.
The currently fashionable answer is to leave them alone on reserves in the wild. At one time, this seemed like an ideal solution for Native Americans as well. Even if it works on a temporary basis, it does not address the problem of what to do with all the apes that have currently been brought up in the civilized world and do not now know how to make their way in the wild. It also does not tell us what to do when a reserve becomes over-populated with apes and what to do if they should decide to wander beyond its boundaries.
The future is full of dilemmas. As each one comes into clearer focus, it is easy to see why man has erected a barrier between himself and the other animals on the planet. This barrier has freed us from responsibilities that we, as a species, were not able to meet. I hope that now we are ready for the challenge, for if we meet it, we shall surely build a better world, one in which man and animals walk side by side with a new understanding, a new respect, and a new recognition that each is but a different physical manifestation of life forces, each seeking to make itself known and to live in harmony with the other.
References
Chapter 1
1. Cited in Stephen Jay Gould, “Bound by the Great Chain,” Natural History, November 1983, 20–24, p. 24.
2. Roy Chapman Andrews, Meet Your Ancestors (New York: John Lang, 1948), 11.
3. Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume, Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 5.
4. Ibid.
5. Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotions in Animals and Man (London: John Murray, 1871), 7.
6. George J. Romanes, Animal Intelligence (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1886), 6.
7. Ibid., 429.
8. Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwinism (London: Macmillan, 1889), 469.
9. Ibid., 463.
10. Ibid.
11. Leslie White, The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization (New York: Grove Press, 1949).
12. Matt Cartmill, “Human Uniqueness and Theoretical Content in Paleoanthropology,” International Journal of Primatology 11 (1990): 173–192, p. 178.
13. Thomas Henry Huxley, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1900), 155–156.
14. Noam Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1988), 34.
15. Ibid.
16. William McGrew, “The Intelligent Use of Tools,” in Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution, eds. Kathleen R. Gibson and Tim Ingold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 151–170, p. 158.
17. Christophe Boesch, “Aspects of Transmission of Tool-Use in Wild Chimpanzees,” in Tools, Language and Cognition, eds. Gibson and Ingold, 171–183, p. 177.
Chapter 2
1. Robert Yerkes, Almost Human (New York: Century Company, 1925), 180.
2. R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice T. Gardner, “Comparative Psychology and Language Acquisition,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 309 (1978): 37–76, p. 73.
3. Thomas Sebeok, “Performing Animals,” Psychology Today, November 1979, 78–91, p. 79.
4. Nicholas Wade, “Does Man Alone Have Language?” Science 208 (1980): 1349–1351, p. 1349.
5. Thomas Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok, cited in Wade, “Does Man Alone Have Language?” 1351.
6. Herbert Terrace, “Why Koko Can’t Talk,” The Sciences, December 1982, 8–10, p. 8.
7. Gardner and Gardner, “Comparative Psychology,” 73.
8. Herbert Terrace, “How Nim Chimpsky Changed My Mind,” Psychology Today, November 1979, 65–76, p. 67.
9. Ibid., 75.
10. Herbert Terrace et al., “Can an Ape Create a Sentence?” Science 206 (1979): 892–902, p. 892.
11. Ibid., 901.
12. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane R. Rumbaugh, “A Response to Herbert Terrace’s Paper, Linguistic Apes,” The Psychological Record 30 (1980): 315–318, p. 318.
13. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Do Apes Use Language?” American Scientist 68 (1980): 49–61, p. 61.
Chapter 3
1. Robert Epstein et al., “Symbolic Communication Between Two Pigeons,” Science 207 (1980): 543–545, p. 545.
2. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh, “Requisites of Symbolic Communication,” The Psychological Record 30 (1980): 305–318, p. 305. See also: E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. Ape Language: From Conditioned Response to Symbol. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
3. Terrace, “How Nim Chimpsky Changed My Mind,” 67–68.
Chapter 4
1. Yerkes, Almost Human, 255.
2. Robert M. Yerkes and Blanche W. Learned, Chimpanzee Intelligence (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Company, 1925), 48–49.
3. Ibid., 31.
4. Yerkes, Almost Human, 248.
5. Dirk Thys van den Audenaerde, “The Tervuren Museum and the Pygmy Chimpanzee,” pp. 3–11, in The Pygmy Chimpanzee: Evolutionary Biology and Behavior, ed. Randall Susman (New York: Plenum Press, 1984), 3.
6. Harold J. Coolidge, “Historical Remarks Bearing on the Discovery of Pan paniscus,” pp. ix-xiii, in The Pygmy Chimpanzee, ed. Susman, xii.
7. Ibid., xii.
8. Harold J. Coolidge, “Pan paniscus: Pigmy Chimpanzee from South of the Congo River,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 17, no. 1 (1933): 1–57, p. 56.
9. Adrienne Zihlman et al., “Pygmy Chimpanzee as a Possible Prototype for the Common Ancestor of Humans, Chimpanzees, and Gorillas,” Nature 275 (1978): 744–746, p. 744.
10. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871), 199.
11. Adrienne Zihlman, “Pygmy Chimps, People, and the Pundits,” New Scientist, 15 November 1984, 39.
12. Henry M. McHenry, “The Common Ancestor,” pp. 201–230, in The Pygmy Chimpanzee, ed. Susman, 218.
13. Takayoshi Kano, The Last Ape (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), ix.
14. Ibid., x.
15. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Beverly J. Wilkerson, “Socio-Sexual Behavior in Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes: A Comparative Study,” Journal of Human Evolution 7 (1978): 327–344, p. 337.
16. Kano, Last Ape
, 192.
17. Savage-Rumbaugh and Wilkerson, “Socio-Sexual Behavior,” 341.
18. Kano, Last Ape, 162.
19. Ibid., 209.
20. Ibid., 211–12.
21. Ibid., 91.
22. Ibid., 182.
23. Ibid., 102.
24. Ellen J. Ingmanson, “Branch Dragging by Pygmy Chimpanzees at Wamba, Zaire,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78 (1989): 244.
25. Kano, Last Ape, viii.
Chapter 5
1. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Spontaneous Symbol Acquisition and Communicative Use by Pygmy Chimpanzees (Pan paniscus),” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115, no. 3 (1986): 211–235, p. 214.
2. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Language Learning in Two Species of Apes,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 9 (1985): 653–665, p. 653.
3. Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Spontaneous Symbol Acquisition,” 223–224.
4. Darwin, Descent of Man, 54.
5. Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Spontaneous Symbol Acquisition,” 214.
Chapter 6
1. Patricia Marks Greenfield and E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, “Grammatical Combinations in Pan paniscus: Processes of Learning and Invention in the Evolution and Development of Language,” in “Language” and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes: Comparative Developmental Perspectives, eds. Sue T. Parker and Kathleen Gibson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 545.
2. Ibid., 541.
3. Ibid., 571.
4. Herbert Terrace, cited in “Clever Kanzi,” U.S. News & World Report, 5 November 1990, 68.
5. Thomas Sebeok, “Chimp Appears to Have Toddler’s Grasp of English, Indianapolis Sun, 7 April 1991.
6. Noam Chomsky, “Clever Kanzi,” Discover, March 1991, 20.
7. Elizabeth Bates, Commentary in “Language Comprehension in Ape and Child,” ed. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58, nos. 3–4 (1993), University of Chicago Press, 222–242, p. 240.
8. “Language Comprehension,” ed. Savage-Rumbaugh, 79–80.
9. Bates, Foreword to “Language Comprehension,” ed. Savage-Rumbaugh, 240.
Chapter 7
1. Duane M. Rumbaugh, Interview with authors, 5 February 1993.
2. Duane M. Rumbaugh et al., “The LANA Project: Origin and Tactics,” in Language Learning by a Chimpanzee, ed. Duane M. Rumbaugh (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 87–90, p. 88.
3. D. Guess et al., “Children with Limited Language,” in Language Intervention Strategies, ed. R. L. Schiefelbusch (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1978), 101–143, p. 105.
4. Rumbaugh, Interview with authors.
5. Mary Ann Romski et al. “Establishment of Symbolic Communication in Persons with Severe Retardation,” Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 53 (1988): 94–107, p. 94.
6. Ibid., 94.
7. Mary Ann Romski, cited in Michael Richter, “The Origins of Language,” Profile, September 1984, 1–5, p. 5.
8. Romski et al., “Establishment of Symbolic Communication,” 103–104.
9. Rose Sevcik, cited in Richter, “Origins of Language,” 5.
10. Adele A. Abrahamsen et al., “Concomitants of Success in Acquiring an Augmentative Communication System,” American Journal on Mental Retardation, 93, no. 5 (1989): 475–496, p. 489.
11. Rumbaugh, Interview with authors.
12. Mary Ann Romski and E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, “Implications for Language Intervention Research: A Nonhuman Primate Model,” pp. 355–374, in Savage-Rumbaugh, Ape Language, 358.
13. Mary Ann Romski, Interview with authors, 4 February 1993.
14. Rose Sevcik, Interview with authors, 5 February 1993.
15. Ibid.
16. Mary Ann Romski and Rose A. Sevcik, “Language Learning through Augmented Means,” pp. 85–104, in Enhancing Children’s Communication: Research Foundations for Intervention, eds. Ann P. Kaiser and David B. Gray (Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks, 1993), 90.
17. Ibid., 91–92.
18. Sevcik, Interview with authors.
19. Romski and Sevcik, “Language Learning,” 94.
20. Duane M. Rumbaugh, Interview with authors, 5 February 1993.
Chapter 8
1. Kenneth P. Oakley, Man the Tool-Maker, 6th ed. (London: British Museum [Natural History], 1972), 3.
2. Darwin, Descent of Man, 144.
3. Sherwood Washburn and C. S. Lancaster, “The Evolution of Hunting,” pp. 293–303, in Man the Hunter, eds. Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), 293.
4. Thomas Wynn and William C. McGrew, “An Ape’s View of the Oldowan,” Man (N.S.), 24 (1989): 383–398, p. 383.
5. Nicholas Toth, “The First Technology,” Scientific American 255, no. 4 (April 1987): 112–121, p. 117.
6. Wynn and McGrew, “Ape’s View of the Oldowan,” 387.
7. Ibid., 388.
8. Ibid., 389.
9. Ibid., 394.
10. Nicholas Toth, Interview with authors, 15 May 1993.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Adapted from Nicholas Toth et al., “Pan the Tool-Maker: Investigations into the Stone Tool-Making and Tool Using Capabilities of a Bonobo (Pan paniscus),” Journal of Archeological Science 20 (1993): 81–91, p. 89.
14. Nicholas Toth, “Archeological Evidence for Preferential Right-Handedness in the Lower Pleistocene, and Its Possible Implications,” Journal of Human Evolution 14 (1985): 607–614, p. 612.
15. Toth, “The First Technology,” 117.
16. Toth, Interview with authors.
17. Toth et al., “Pan the Tool-Maker,” 89.
18. Toth, Interview with authors.
Chapter 9
1. Dean Falk, Commentary to a paper, Current Anthropology 30, 141–142, p. 142.
2. Terrence W. Deacon, “Brain-Language Coevolution,” pp. 1–35, in The Evolution of Human Languages, eds. J. A. Hawkins and Murray Gell-Mann (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990), 4.
3. Edmund S. Crelin, The Human Vocal Tract: Anatomy, Function, Development, and Evolution (New York: Vantage Press, 1987), 87.
4. Patricia Marks Greenfield, “Language, Tools, and Brain,” (Paper for Wenner-Gren conference, “Tools, Language, and Intelligence,” 16–24 March, Cascais, Portugal), 28, 30.
5. Glynn L. Isaac, “Stages of Cultural Elaboration in the Pleistocene,” in Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280 (1976): 275–288, p. 283.
6. Wynn and McGrew, “Ape’s View of the Oldowan,” 394.
7. Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, “Early Stone Industries and Inferences Regarding Language and Cognition,” pp. 346–362, in Tools, Language, and Cognition, eds. Gibson and Ingold, 350.
8. Ibid., 351.
9. Thomas Wynn, “Two Developments in the Mind of Early Homo,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, in press.
10. Ibid.
11. Iain Davidson and William Noble, “Tools and Language in Human Evolution,” pp. 363–388, in Tools, Language, and Cognition, eds. Gibson and Ingold, 363.
12. Iain Davidson, Interview with authors, 13 April 1993.
13. Davidson and Noble, “Tools and Language,” 367.
14. Davidson, Interview with authors.
15. Toth, Interview with authors.
16. Iain Davidson and William Noble, “The Archaeology of Depiction,” Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 125–155, p. 132.
17. Ibid., 134.
18. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2d. ed. (London: John Murray, 1874), 66.
Chapter 10
1. Cartmill, “Human Uniqueness,” 187.
2. Mary Midgely, Animals and Why They Matter (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1985), 56.
3. Andrew Whiten and Richard W. Byrne, cited in Roger Lewin, “Do Animals Read Minds?” Science 238 (1987): 1350–1351, p. 1350.
4. Richard W. Byrne and Andrew Whiten, “The Thinking Primate’s Guide to Deception,” Ne
w Scientist, 3 December 1987, 54–57, p. 54.
5. Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, How Monkeys See the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 214.
6. Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney, “Inside the Mind of a Monkey,” New Scientist, 4 January 1992, 25–29, p. 29.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
A
Abrahamsen, Adele A.
Acheulian handaxe
Action-related utterances Akili
Ali
Almost Human (Yerkes) American Sign Language Andrews, Roy Chapman
Animal intelligence
animal consciousness
common-sense view of
early study of
versus human uniqueness Morgan’s Canon
Animal Model Project Anthropomorphism
Ape-language research action-related utterances American Sign Language cognitive capacity of apes in comprehension by apes
comprehension of spoken English criticism of research
embedded phrases
grammar
keyboard-based projects laissez-faire learning method major goal of
multiword utterances
novel vocalizations
representation in
requests made by chimps shape-based projects