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The argument that apes have never asked a question “is a classic example of overstatement,” said Heidi Lyn, a professor at the University of South Alabama’s Comparative Cognition and Communication Lab at the Department of Psychology and Marine Science.
“There is plenty of evidence of apes asking questions, although the structure may not look exactly like humans asking questions,” Lyn explained.
https://www.snopes.com/articles/467842/apes-questions-communicate/
If a chimpanzee looks its handler in the eyes and points to a banana, it may be interpreted that the ape is asking to have the banana. This, Hobaiter said, shows apes are capable of asking questions.
Obviously not in the spirit of the question. No curiosity, no attempt to learn about what’s going on around them. The article has no examples of real questions, so to me I’d say the meme rings true.
Yeah, when my cat meows, it is “asking” for snacks. But it’s not inquiring about snacks, or curious about where the snacks come from or why cats enjoy snacking so much.
Granted, many humans don’t ask such questions either, but that’s because intellectual acuity is on a spectrum also occupied by non-human animals, at least in the realm of being an incurious dumbass.
How do you know your cat isnt curious, is it survival bias. All the curious cats died
Cats don’t need to ask questions about the world because they are scientists and will figure it out for themselves if they don’t get shown the answers. They know where the snacks come from, at least in regards to their own world, that’s why they come running when they hear the package.
They knock stuff over to see what happens. They meow for treats to see what happens. They sit on your face to wake you up to see what happens. They get into things just to see what’s in them.
And when the result is something they want, they try it again to see if the result is consistent. Reproducible.
That’s why the best way to get a cat to stop doing something they do to you is to ignore them. They meow to wake you up for food? They do that because it’s been working. Stop responding, and the behavior will also stop.
It’s not that cats can’t ask questions. It’s that they can’t ask abstract questions. That’s quite different.
They can, but they don’t know how to dumb it down enough for their minions to understand.
What you are doing is anthropomorphizing an animal’s behavior and ascribing intent behind the action without having any substantial basis for that claim.
Cats are intelligent, yes, but what you have described is completely devoid of any understanding of animal behavior or psychology.
Well of course he is. He’s not a cat.
My cat has asked where my wife is. She has a very specific meow for each of us that she uses when she’s looking for us. One day while my wife was at work, cat meowed for my wife. Told the cat she’d be home on a couple hours. Cat curled up by the window, satisfied. Next time it happened, I teased her and tried to play with her. She kept wandering around the house looking for my wife until I told her she was at work. Smart little bastard.
Your cat’s breath smells like cat food.
There’s your “Loading screen game tip” for today lol.
I think there are several separate cognitive abilities needed to ask questions. Curiosity (which is very common), complex communication (much less common), and advanced theory of mind (exists on a spectrum, you need not only awareness of your own mental state, or metacognition, but awareness that others have a mental state that is distinct from your own. Humans actually develop this ability slowly throughout childhood, and it goes through stages). Though there are other species with similar traits, it might well be the case that humans are the only living species in possession of all of them simultaneously.
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Pay closer attention, they are communicating all the time. We had a cat family of five, and we’re down to the last one, a 17 yo. She has an extremely wide vocabulary, and absolutely asks for water, food, snacks, cuddles, etc.
You know when you sit down with food, and they want to get a sniff of it? What is that, if not “Hey, watcha got? Is it good? Can I have some? Just a sniff?” They aren’t deep, philosophical questions, but they are still questions.
They are asking questions and communicating all day long, if you only pay attention to them.
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The assertion was that no gorilla has ever asked a question, not that they’ve never asked a GOOD question. Asking if they can have a drink of water, or something to eat, is a question. A simple one, but still a valid question. It didn’t say they have never asked a philosophical question, and I wouldn’t expect them to.
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asking to have the banana
Yeah that’s just a quirk of the English language in that “ask” means both inquiring, trying to learn information from a response, and request, a communication to another that the “asker” wants something.
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By that standard, my dog is as smart as a gorilla
Hi, it’s me, your dog, woof woof.
I have transcended the limits of my species and have learned to type utter doggerel into the glowing rectangle woof woof
Also
apes have never asked one question
WE ARE APES. We ask questions all the time.
Ook, ook-ook?
Yes, sir. The reference desk is right over there. But you’d know that, being the Librarian, right?
Ook.
What did you say?!
I’m pretty confident most scientists studying animals have stated that apes have never asked a question. It’s pretty clear on record that only two ever have, both African Grey parrots.
Yeah, the moment I read that, I thought it sounded like bullshit. I doubt there’s a database of every sign language interaction with apes that proves that no ape has ever asked a question.
And yet the scientists that did those studies stated that the animals never asked a question. Those are all other researchers claiming after the fact that questions were asked.
This right here. Humans assume so much based on their experiences and interpretations. It’s infuriating the assumptions we make. “That turtle just eats, sleeps and shits! It’s clearly not intelligent! It’s never read The Hunger Games!” goes back to working to afford a place to eat, sleep and shit while also subjugating others, inciting wars, destroying the planet and reading The Hunger Games
The entire study of great apes and sign language has been based on flawed methodology and subjective and biased interpretation of very small data sets.
Its interesting that apes can recollect abstract symbols. It’s even kind of interesting that they can to some extent recollect hand gestures. But it is nothing more than symbolic association at its absolute best. Calling it language is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is taking place. Apes already possess several kinds of ‘language’ comparable to symbolic association, stuff like emotive language and body language and expressive language. There is no substantive evidence that they are capable of understanding and using an abstract language.
What has largely happened in so called ‘studies’ on ‘sign language’ in great apes, has been a lot of animal abuse and fundraising for animal abuse predicated on vague notions of how inspiring the idea of talking apes is. They can’t talk. They are nonetheless very interesting creatures and we should be fascinated by them even without them having the ability to speak human language.
The really frustrating part is that they shouldn’t have to speak with us for us to feel compassion towards them. The really disgusting part is that wild animals were being abducted from the wild and raised in deplorable conditions while essentially being tormented by disgraced researchers trying to prove that they could talk. They’re very well suited to their natural environment (which we are destroying) and are not meant to live lives in concrete cages on the other side of the world being prodded and clicker trained to make vague hand motions. It’s just animal cruelty under the guise of scientific research.
You’re wrong. I’m a great ape and I can understand abstract language.
You big, hairy ape! Look at you over here, with your big brain and your big ass. So much abstract thinking, and you ain’t even got a prehensile tail!
Tangentially related: the fucked-up experiments they were doing on dolphins, like giving them LSD or keeping one in a flooded, human-style house and trying to teach it English: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong | The Guardian
content warning:
spoiler
it involves a caretaker routinely jerking off the dolphin she lived with, then the project got shut down, and the dolphin was kept in so bad circumstances that it committed suicide after a few weeks
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tbh that sounds a lot more entertaining :D
This reminds me of an excerpt in David Graeber’s “Bullshit Jobs”, where he quotes a sailor from like, the East India Company or something.
Something along the lines of “Many suspect the monkeys of the island can speak, but wisely choose not to, knowing they would be taught English and put to work.”
But it is nothing more than symbolic association at its absolute best
Have you ever had a pet that you were close to? I think you’re right that it’s cruel to study them though.
Ive had many pets. None of them have ever exhibited the ability of abstraction. Thats not an insult to their ability to understand my emotions or whats happening around them, their brains are just literally not designed to engage in the kinds of communication humans are capable of. They could not have the conversation you and I are having right now, they are neurologically not capable of it. Humans are uniquely capable of this.
None of them have ever exhibited the ability of abstraction.
First of all, isn’t science always testing and studying? Why and how can you make that statement so confidently? You don’t know this for sure.
Second, couldn’t this just be bias on your part? I’ve had dogs that could speak our language the best they could. Granted, these were very smart dogs, so they might have been outliers. But your dogs could have been dumb as rocks too.
Third, you’re like that archaeology meme with the obsidian in the rafters. It might just be you.
Sorry you lost me with the archeology memes, ill take your word for it lol.
I said exhibited, that already implies that I dont know for certain. I am saying that there has never been any evidence provided to me that my pets, or anyone else’s pets, have ever communicated using structured abstract language to communicate. I think believing that animals have a secret ability to communicate in non-symbolic ways is basically a conspiracy theory. There is nuance to what we would define as symbolic and what we would define as structured abstract language, but overall I think this holds true even with very generous definitions for those terms.
Communication through posturing, facial expressions, basic vocalizations, pheromones, can all be used to communicate some ideas that are complex in some ways. You can communicate to someone who knows you very well just be showing them a subtle facial expression that they know you well enough to pick up on. We are especially good at communicating emotions this way. I dont think that anyone would argue those modes of communication are as robust as, say, English. How would we have this conversation through purely posturing, facial expressions, vocalizations and pheromones? Can we convey these abstract ideas through those things that are unstructured and based on what is essentially our ability to pattern much external stimuli? Can you present my arguments to your dog? Can you show that your dog can be made to understand the arguments I am making about language?
If you compare a 2 year old and a really smart dog, they’re about the same in their reasoning skills. So yeah, I’ve had arguments with 2 year olds and dogs.
Again, you’re saying you personally haven’t had those experiences, so you might be an outlier.
Your first statement is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand, so I dont even really know why you said it.
I’m saying I’ve never even heard of it. I would love to see a qualitative analysis of ‘arguments’ with dogs. I have never seen any evidence whatsoever that anything even approaching actual language comprehension is happening. Understanding some words and sentences is not the same thing as language comprehension. Do they understand the meaning of the terms? Can they infer new things if terms have been rearranged? Do they understand the structure of language? No. They definitely cannot. They are capable of pattern matching human vocalizations though, especially as they relate to themselves and things in their immediate environment. Thats not the same thing as language. I’m very sorry if you do not understand the nuance between those 2 things, or if you genuinely believe any of your pets could speak English. Theres nothing I or anyone else can say to convince you otherwise if youve already decided that your subjective emotional experience with your animals leads you to believe they have English language speaking skills.
I really hope you’re not a working scientist.
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Scientists speculate that this is why no ape has ever been on Jeopardy.
Is this true? I was listening to a lecture of I think it was a linguist on apes using sign language, saying that the evidence for them actually understanding language is… not great. Like it appear they just sign until their carers gets the right/expected answer. That they may want to say ‘apple’, but not finding the word, they can’t describe the shape, color, just random words util they hit the correct one, or something like that.
Afaik yes, although I remember reading that (I think) Koko sort of asked something (I think it was “what color” or something like that). But at the same time I remember reading about similar criticism you mentioned, that Koko’s signs were often quite random and the caretakers often tried to make fun of the situation that “she’s just joking”.
I should find that article …
Edit: I don’t know if it was exactly this artice but it was similar
https://bigthink.com/life/ape-sign-language/
Edit 2: or this
Yes, that is the one! Koko and “just joking” I recognize from that lecture.
Longest non-human primate sentence on record:
Give Orange Me Give Eat Orange Me Eat Orange Give Me Eat Orange Give Me You
Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I’m hot. What? Taxes, they’ll be lower, son. The Democratic vote for me is right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.
That is pretty impressive. Where is it from?
I’m pretty sure that was Bukowski
Not asshole enough for him
NO, baaaaad ape. Me better you no good. I win you lose whyareyoulikethis. No. bad ape. Existence is suffering.
Like that?
Pelcan mouth is good place for baby Put baby Pelican mouth now
Proving that Trump supporters don’t count as human.
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Imagine a fucking gorilla turning to the scientist and ask:
Does this unit have a soul?
Now I’m sad…
Onion News Network - Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday
Well I ain’t never asked a gorilla nothin neither
Never once? Not even “what’s for dinner”?
To be, or not to be?
well, kinda yeah. Just jumbled and weird:
Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you.
is the longest recorded sentence
Good. They will never question how we treat them. Then they can’t rise up and kill us all.
Canadians don’t ask questions either. They just make statements, and then add “eh” to the end of the sentence.
Canadians and apes have a lot in common, is what this article is telling me.
Thats not how eh is used
You’ve met Canadians, eh?
Oh ya, everyday lol
I mean, it sort of is, but only for the specific question of asking for agreement with the preceding statement.
“This weather, eh?”
“The Leafs actually have a chance this year, eh?”But not like “What’s your favourite colour, eh?” (Unless, maybe, it’s in the context where it’s obvious, like someone decked out head-to-toe in pink.)
Haha yeah I always thought it was like the Japanese or Portuguese “Ne?” , or British “In’nit?”
It’s like a statement followed by a “You agree too, right?” Lol
A Canadian friend told Americans do the same thing, we just put our word at the beginning.
“Hey, get off my car!” “Get off my car, eh!”
Not sure if he was being serious though.
Nah, it’s more like the yeah at the end of a sentence, yeah? We don’t use it as much because fuck you if you disagree with me. But yeah, we also will just add a question mark with no word.
Everything is so sad today
Ishmael aims to expose that several widely accepted assumptions of modern society, such as human supremacy,
Click link, go to “anthropocentrism”.
Bro I can believe people are smarter than other animals and still not believe we’re the best or most valuable or worthiest or anything like that.
I know dogs are not as smart as me, but they’re sure as fuck better people than me.
Congratulations on that incredibly profound title OP. You should become a professional quote maker or something equally enlightened.
