Essay On Apes Use Language

Introduction: Apes

When humans think about animals talking we usually think it’s pretty ironic. We don’t think it’s normal because they’re animals and conversing isn’t something they do. But in reality all animals talk to each other in a way human society is never going to understand. It might not be an actual language, with words, but it’s something they use to communicate with one another. Our class got the privilege to look more closely into how animals communicate, but when we say animals we mean one in particular.

• How spontaneously have apes used language?

• How creatively have apes used language?

• Can apes create sentences?

• What are the implications of the ape language studies?

Apes communicate with their own “languages”; in the next few paragraphs we are going to talk about apes and how they converse with one another and with humans.

How spontaneously have apes used language?

Primates, such as apes, communicate by listening and responding through what they've been taught. If an ape is taught to ring a bell when it's hungry then that's how they will communicate and tell you they are hungry. Apes are not able to physically speak, so they use their words through their actions. In some way, you can relate them to babies. Babies cannot talk as soon as they’re born so they communicate with their hands and eyes to ask for stuff and communicate with adults. In an important article, Terrace, Petitto, Sanders, and Bever reported that apes were imitating and were being taught by their trainers’ commands, rather than naturally speaking. The apes are trained to communicate with humans so they can relate to them. Terrace and his colleagues at Columbia University gave much attention to a chimpanzee that they trained named Nim,...

... middle of paper ...

... have made discoveries that may cause even the skeptics to take notice. Ongoing studies at the Yerkes Primate Research Center have revealed amazing similarities in the brains of chimpanzees and humans. Through brain scans of live chimpanzees, researchers have found that, as with humans, “the language-controlling PT [planum temporale] is larger on the left side of the chimps’ brains than on the right. But it is not lateralized in monkeys, which are less closely related to humans than apes are." (Begley, 1998)

Although the ape language studies continue to generate disagreement, researchers have shown over the past thirty years that the gap between the verbal abilities of apes and humans is far less dramatic than was once believed. Apes and humans are practically one in the same. With more research we may be able to find more similarities between apes and humans.