Can Chimpanzees Learn A Phonemic Language

Over the past half century, humans have wondered if it's possible for other species to be able to speak a human language and fully understand the concept of what they are saying. To test their theories, scientists have done hundreds of studies, mainly with chimpanzees. Scientists have chosen this species because they are considered one of the closest in intelligence and DNA to us humans. After many trials, both based on genetics results of their tests, scientists discovered that primates cannasot speak a phonemic language. A phonemic language is a language where the sounds are distributed in a specific order to create a word or even phrases. Humans find it very easy to create phonemes unlike other species, even ones as intelligent as apes and

Healy, she speaks about two investigations with chimpanzees who are taught to learn phonemic languages but were fairly unsuccessful. The tests were done by Gardners and Premack. After many tests, these scientists found “a chimpanzee would find it easier to associate ideas or meanings with visual and manual sensations than with auditory and vocal sensations,” (Healy, 167). Although some chimps have been taught English, they often don’t speak it. Most chimpanzees, if taught any English, only speak a few words. Because of these tests, we know that chimpanzees are able to understand the concept of a language, as plenty have been taught to use American Sign Language or point at objects to communicate. “’One school [of thought] believes that chimpanzees simply don't have the vocal apparatus, and others believe they do, but language as we know it just hasn't emerged or evolved,’ said Marc Bekoff, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.” (Miriam Kramer)

I feel like one of the main reasons human study other animals is to figure out why the species does the things that they do, and to discover how close we are to other species. We have always been curious about where we came from, what our ancestors were like, and one of the easiest ways is to study what they may have been like is by studying chimpanzees. When comparing DNA, ours is 98.8 percent similar to theirs.

From this study, we know that chimpanzees are entirely capable of learning new information. After that study, scientists and psychologists studied the biology and discovered that they did not have to correct phonemes. Language is the main one of the main superiorities we have over other species. It’s what makes us stand out most from primates and other similar animals. As said by Hank Green in Crash Course, the conditioning capacity of an animal is dependent on its biology. So where chimpanzees are easily teachable and same as dogs, fish or turtle are not very capable of doing