it's probably too late for koko, but can't this kind of research be done in groups in the future? i mean, imagine being abducted by an advanced alien species, locked in a room and forced to communicate in code with them. no matter how well the aliens treat you, you're going to get lonely. you're going to feel various pressures to do the kinds of things that your dna demands that you do. and, you're a human, not a gorilla. chances are you're going to cope with it better because you have more advanced reasoning skills.
further, wouldn't the research even be superior if it was carried out in groups? if you tried to study a human under those circumstances, you'd no doubt be studying some kind of manic depressive psychopath, as the result of the conditions.
nearly every segment i've seen from this ape is trying to communicate immense grief. she's fucking miserable....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihb6rBvKsO4
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the thing about gorillas is that they're smart enough to understand they're being caged. you've seen at least one action movie, right? what happens when the aliens put an action hero in a cage, and the action hero gets the chance to escape? doesn't even need to be aliens, either, does it? could just be bad guys. and, it's carnage.
you consequently need to interpret the violent behaviour, when it happens, as a function of their captivity. you'd act no differently, yourself. it doesn't matter if the aliens or the bad guys "treat you well". you're still going to eat their faces if you get a way out.
but, it's different if you're integrated into the family. maybe there's a level of stockholm syndrome, but it's a different scenario than being locked in an enclosure.
what's going to define the nature of the beast is going to primarily be whether or not they interpret you as food. you're nuts to try and befriend a tiger. but gorillas are never going to interpret you that way.
of the other intelligent species? elephants aren't going to eat you, either.
cetaceans are sketchier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMhdXH4p0A
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i believe that the grooming is a gesture of friendship and the head honcho gorilla stormed off when it wasn't reciprocated. so, if you're ever in uganda, and some gorillas start grooming you, you really ought to groom back. it's rude not to, and might hurt their feelings. it's kind of like not accepting a local meal with the local customs..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2hCuDy2wg
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aug 14, 2014
again: when an elephant rubs your nose, it's expecting you to rub back. that's why it's standing there, within a foot of her nose, expecting reciprocation, and eventually walks off, confused and dejected.
why are humans so rude?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5MQVBaqVkA
it's not a dog...
basically, she "left the creature hanging". that trunk rub is a high five, or a hug. you gotta reciprocate or it's going to feel rejected...
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jessica
+gps the apes that don't wear clothes have no trunks, either. i don't think it would find that confusing.
elephants learn almost everything from their parents and almost nothing from instinct - quite a bit like us. they wouldn't know an ape from a banana if they've never seen one before. that's not how the baby elephant is interpreting the human.
you've seen kids anthropomorphize animals. it's no doubt proboscidomorphizing her.
paramornal
+deathtokoalas Where did you learn that "when an elephant rubs your nose, its expecting you to rub back"? I am a veterinarian and my fiance is an animal caregiver and we never learned anything like that.
jessica
+paramornal well, it's an extrapolation. for example, you might see people hug their dogs. that's human behaviour, but sometimes we treat other species as though they're a member of ours, for the simple reason that it's how we think. now, humans are unusually smart animals - we can figure out how to communicate with some animals by mimicking their behaviour. elephants are also very smart, but this is a very young one.
when elephants rub their trunks against each other, it's a bonding thing. you'd expect family members or friends to do this. so, you'd expect an elephant to behave that way towards a human it wishes to bond with, because that's what an elephant would do - just as you might hug your dog. certainly, that's what the behaviour she's expressing is - a bonding rub.
it's kind of like when a chimp starts grooming you. that's not random behaviour, it's a bonding thing.
humans hug, chimps groom, elephants rub - and dogs lick. same idea. the fact that we're different species doesn't change the behaviour.
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jessica
this isn't new behaviour, and i don't need a lecture. i may have coined the term, but there are many other observed instances of elephants treating humans as elephants. with elephants, especially - due to their extreme intelligence - it takes on a deeper dimension. i'm using examples with dogs and chimps to demonstrate behaviour they share with humans. in more generality, you can't interpret elephant behaviour the way you'd interpret dog behaviour - they're far too intelligent. they're not as smart as we are either, but you need to learn more in the direction of us than in the direction of our pets. with the trunk rubbing, this is a universal in elephant populations. humans may show a lot of variation in customs, but we also have some universals - and touching is one of them.
as another example of elephants treating humans as elephants, elephants have been known to bury sleeping humans under the misunderstanding that they're dead or dying. as astonishing as it sounds - and it is remarkable - elephants actually hold funerals for their dead friends and family members.
in fact, almost any mammal (excluding certain predators that interpret us as a natural prey source, which are mostly cats: lions and tigers) and a lot of more advanced non-mammals (this has been demonstrated in owls) will interpret us through their own filters and allow us to integrate into their social networks when they are existing. even when they're not existing, animals that co-habitate with us will work us into their own social understandings. i grew up with two or three dogs in the house at any given time, and i was entirely aware that i was as much a part of their pack as they were a part of the family - that we lived in a den as much as we lived in a house. the dog that protects their owner is demonstrating pack behaviour with the underlying understanding of the human as their dog kin. and, you've surely been licked by a dog that's trying to show affection and not really aware that we humans think it's a little gross. we do the same thing when we stand up for animals we interact with socially.
we have the ability to separate between species we consider "friends", but a moment's reflection will realize that this is an advanced cognitive ability. that the elephant sees an elephant in the human is not a sign of extreme intelligence, but a demonstration of their lack of full awareness. as great as elephant cognition may be in relative terms, it is a substantial abstraction to understand that different animals have different cultures and adjust behaviour to cater to each one. elephants understand elephant culture; due to our ability to understand that, we have the responsibility to adjust and respond accordingly.
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yeah, i've seen enough to realize that the flowers are fake and the gorilla's articulation of sign language isn't. separating between the idea of "falsity" and "representation" may be a little abstract for her (although it might be something that could be taught), but she clearly understood that the picture of a flower was not actually a flower and felt the need to specify it. that is, she wasn't content with saying "that's a flower", she needed to find a way to express "that's a picture of a flower". that might not imply that she meets any technical definitions regarding the use of human language, but it does demonstrate that she understands what she's doing when she flops her fingers around. she is very clearly consciously doing so with the intent of expressing ideas that are her own.
i'm not sure it even makes sense to try and ask questions about grammar as they relate to sign language outside of the context of a spoken and written language, and i think it opens up a lot of questions regarding the circularity of it. i know there's different ideas about it, but i have a hard time separating grammar from written language. it seems to me that it's the writing that enforces the grammar, rather than the other way around. when you look at tribes that don't have written languages, the grammar may exist but is often rather basic - and they have thousands of years of linguistic evolution to get to the point, whereas koko only has her lifetime and a set of limited tools to express herself. i don't really have to hypothesize about taking europeans and putting them on a different planet without writing - you can look at how the language has broken down in areas of australia and north america, where the written component is not great. that is, you take the writing out and the grammar demonstrably starts to fracture. so, i just don't see how this experiment is able to produce any kind of meaningful conclusions on the question. to answer that question, you'd have to carry the experiment out over generations, teach them how to use written language and then construct something that gives the gorilla more ability to use grammar than signing.
but, i'm not falling for this idea that the gorilla is being conditioned. i've seen very little, of course - youtube videos. but the bit i've seen is just overwhelmingly in favour of an independent agent producing independent thought.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U64k_fA2Rcc
if the gorilla can understand over a thousand signs, it could conceivably understand just as many key combinations on a keyboard. that would eliminate a lot of ambiguity. perhaps using chinese style writing (or even something roughly comparable to hieroglyphs) may be a better way to start.
after all, humans didn't start with a complicated alphabet, either. we built it up over time. we started with pictorial representations that expressed ideas.
so, it's not really fair to grab a gorilla and expect it to grasp a modern roman alphabet with the complexity of a modern language right off the bat. i wouldn't even expect that a pre-neolithic member of our own species would be able to do that.
everything we know about plasticity and evolution nowadays suggests that whatever is inherent must have developed over the time we've been using language and grammar. so, if you want to do this and draw any meaningful results, you need to control for that by emulating the same kind of systems that early humans used, not the fully developed ones we use now.
i mean, we have no idea what ancient egyptians sounded like when they talked to each other. we can take some guesses. but there's not really any serious way to really understand how complex their grammar was, at the time.
chinese would be better for that reason, but it might be too complicated.
if tolkien can construct a new language, it can't be that hard to make one for some apes using a simple but "correct" grammar and then transliterate it with pictures constructed with combinations on an oversized keyboard.
and i'm suggesting this because i think the results will be shocking to certain people and put some questions to rest rather permanently.
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see, this is rather pointless. yeah, she bashed the thing for a few seconds to get a peanut. but, what did you expect? the moonlight sonata? this is again a circular concern. i'm not aware of a culture that doesn't have music, but, if one did exist, i'm not convinced you'd get a different reaction from a human out of that culture.
and, probably roughly half the adult human population of the united states would react no differently....
"a keyboard. it makes sound. whatever. when do i get paid?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CFvywPO0pQ
the implied error is consequently within the universality of music. it seems to be universal across culture. but most humans couldn't care less.