APES COULD SPEAK! ( Brain Function Discovery at Georgia St.)

BBC via Pravda.Ru Newswire ^ | September 30, 2001 21:05 | William Hopkins & Claudio Cantalupo-Georgia State University

[jennyp]

So what. It's not speaking that makes us intelligent it is reasoning.

True. But consider this: It's by communicating subtle & complex information to each other that we build a synergistic community (or even just a family or 2 partners in the hunting party, etc.) which greatly enhances our chances in the world. That could be a catalyst for the raw reasoning power to be more important to survival than it otherwise would've been.

Maybe?

[Rudder]

They could speak if they wanted to but they don't.

Besides they're too dumb to know what it all means.

[Centurion2000]

We already knew they could speak. Why the heck do you think there are people teaching them sign language ??

Apes aren't stupid; they just lost the race for sentience/civilization thank God.

[ValerieUSA]

Serpents could speak, too - and it was a curse, not evolution, that transformed them.

[Wonder Warthog]

"I think that is the key. Man is where he is because he can [sometimes] think. every other life form simply reacts to external stimulus."

Balderdash. My female Corgi schemes with the best of them. It ain't all "reacting to external stimulus".

[Clioman]

Especially Hil...

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

And maybe picking ticks out of eachother's hair is more than just mere grooming. Maybe it's sign language?

All kidding aside, sure they are more advanced than dogs but so what.

They are way more limited that humans.

My dog understands about 30 words but I wouldn't start comparing him to humans that create whole societies.

[janus]

The anthropoid apes observed by the investigators most often gesticulated with their right hand

New York cabs drivers use the same form of communication. Can anthropoid apes drive cabs? What other kind of ape is there, apart from the anthropoid type. I thought all apes were anthropoids.

[sweetliberty]

Just what we need; another species in the demonRat voting block!

[jennyp]

I know apes are much more limited than us. I was just wondering if speaking ability & reasoning ability were related (on an evolutionary timescale). And if they were, it could shed light on where in the timeline humans started to increase their reasoning abilities.

There's also the theory that toolmaking & manupulating uses the same areas of the brain as forming sentences, so maybe increasing ability for toolmaking also helped pave the way for increasing ability to communicate in more complex ways.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

I'm sure with communication skills came the sharing of ideas which always leads to increased intelligence.