[_ Old Earth _] Talking monkeys

[reznwerks]

"It seems that human beings are not the only ones who are able to string sentences together "

"MONKEYS are able to string together a simple “sentenceâ€Â, according to research that offers the first evidence that animals might be capable of a key feature of language."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 77,00.html

 

[jive]

thats pretty kool.
now if they will just learn not to fling poo, when i go see them at the zoo.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

British scientists have discovered that the putty-nosed monkey in Nigeria pictured above sometimes communicates by combining sounds into a sequence that has a different meaning from any of its component calls, an ability that was thought to be uniquely human.

Just like dove. They cooo and mourn, but when startled they let out a

consistant pattern that warns other doves. Deer snort when danger is

present, warning other dear.

Frogs croak when chatting, but yelp when startled, again notifying others

Many animals communicate by smell: they release pheromones (airborne

to send messages to others).

Chimpanzees greet each other by touching hands.

Male fiddler crabs wave their giant claw to attract female fiddler crabs.

White-tailed deer show alarm by flicking up their tails.

Dogs stretch their front legs out in front of them and lower their bodies when

they want to play.

Elephants show affection by entwining their trunks.

Giraffes press their necks together when they are attracted to each other.

Gorillas stick out their tongues to show anger.

Horses rub noses as a sign of affection.

Kangaroos thump their hind legs to warn others of danger.

Prairie dogs bare their teeth and press their mouths together to discover if

they are friends or foes.

Whales breach (leap out of the water) repeatedly to send messages to

other whales.

Swans entwine their long necks both to fight and to court.

Some predators communicate to prey in ways that change their behaviour

and make them easier to catch, in effect deceiving them. A well-known

example is the angler fish, which has a fleshy growth protruding from its

forehead and dangling in front of its jaws; smaller fish try to take the lure,

and in so doing are perfectly placed for the angler fish to eat them.


A cleaning station is a location where fish, and other marine life, congregate

to be cleaned.

The cleaning process includes the removal of parasites from the animal's

body (both externally and internally), and can be performed by various

creatures (including Cleaner Shrimp and numerous species of fish,

especially wrasses and gobies).

When the fish approaches a cleaner station they will pose in an 'unnatural'

way to show the cleaner fish that they will not eat them, this can be pointing

in strange direction and/or opening their mouths wide. The cleaner fish will

then eat the parasites directly from the skin of the cleaned fish, it will even

swim into the mouth and gills of the fish to be cleaned.

The following forms of communication can also be used for

interspecific communication.

The best known forms of communication involve the display of distinctive

body parts, or distinctive bodily movements; often these occur in

combination, so a distinctive movement acts to reveal or emphasise a

distinctive body part. An example that was important in the history of

ethology was the parent Herring Gull's presentation of its bill to a chick in

the nest. Like many gulls, the Herring Gull has a brightly coloured bill, yellow

with a red spot on the lower mandible near the tip. When it returns to the

nest with food, the parent stands over its chick and taps the bill on the

ground in front of it; this elicits a begging response from a hungry chick

(pecking at the red spot), which stimulates the parent to regurgitate food in

front of it. The complete signal therefore involves a distinctive morphological

feature (body part), the red-spotted bill, and a distinctive movement

(tapping towards the ground) which makes the red spot highly visible to the

chick.

The avian vocal organ is called the syrinx; it is a bony structure at the

bottom of the trachea (unlike the larynx at the top of the mammalian

trachea). The syrinx and sometimes a surrounding air sac resonate to

vibrations that are made by membranes past which the bird forces air. It

controls the pitch by changing the tension on the membranes and controls

both pitch and volume by changing the force of exhalation. The bird can

control the two sides of the trachea independently, which is how some

species can produce two notes at once.

The songs of different species of birds vary, and are more or less

characteristic of the species. In modern-day biology, bird song is typically

analysed using acoustic spectroscopy. Species vary greatly in the complexity

of their songs and in the number of distinct kinds of song they sing (up to

3000 in the Brown Thrasher); in some species, individuals vary in the same

way. In a few species such as starlings and mockingbirds, songs imbed

arbitrary elements learned in the individual's lifetime, a form of mimicry

as the bird

In many species it appears that although

the basic song is the same for all members of the species, young birds

learn the details of their songs from their fathers, and this allows variations

to build up over generations, a form of dialect.


Sit back sometime, in a quiet, pleasant location and listen to the mocking

bird. I've done this many times, jacking with the birds, whistling out crazy

patterns, only to see them mimmick me perfectly.

It's called programming bro. Programming comes from intelligence by

defintion.

Cause and Effect: Whatever something is derived from is greater in all

dimensions: i.e.intelligence of species <= to the cause.

How does one derive, in right mind, that the cause of something is less than

the result?

 

[reznwerks]

sentences

Charlie try reading the article. They put together sentences and speak them to create a result in changed behavior. This is thinking. I don't think you realized that by posting what you did you weaken your case by lowering the status of humans to other animals. Isn't this what you and others that frequent this board have been trying NOT to do?

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

Charlie try reading the article. They put together sentences and speak them to create a result in changed behavior. This is thinking. I don't think you realized that by posting what you did you weaken your case by lowering the status of humans to other animals. Isn't this what you and others that frequent this board have been trying NOT to do?

Rez, I don't see how animals' ability to communicate raises them to human

status. Pretty much all animals communicate in one form or another.

 

[Vanaka]

When Pigs Fly... : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

 

[ArtGuy]

Pretty much all animals communicate in one form or another.

Yes, but they don't typically form sentences.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

Yes, but they don't typically form sentences.

True, and I'm not convinced that uttering two different sounds is really a

sentence. If so, then we would have to include a bunch of species in a grouping

of animals that can form sentences (song birds, dogs, frogs, etc...).

 

[jive]

i dont see the debate here. if monkeys can say lil bit. its because they were taught by humans. it would be diff. if you was in a jungle in africa and see a group of wild monkeys and they say "hey, what it is yo" lol.
i dont know for sure but im guessing the monkeys voicebox is as close to humans as any other. birds have been talking forever. is this new to you?
if anything monkeys are dumber than birds if there just now learning how to say things.
ive seen dogs that can howl out things like "i love you" or "hello"
whats the debate?

 

[ArtGuy]

Yes, but they don't typically form sentences.

True, and I'm not convinced that uttering two different sounds is really a

sentence. If so, then we would have to include a bunch of species in a grouping

of animals that can form sentences (song birds, dogs, frogs, etc...).

But based on the article, they're not just making multiple sounds. They're combining multiple sounds in different ways to create a variety of words. A better analogy might be syllables rather than sentences.

For example, a bird might say "coo" to mean "you're a hot looking bird, wanna mate?" and "caw" to mean "Watch out for that cat." But coo always means the one thing, and caw always means the other.

With these monkeys, you may have "ooh" and "ee" and "ah". "Ooh" might mean "hi there" and "ee" might mean "stay away from my food" and "ah" might mean "I'm going to pick fleas off of you." But then they also have "ooh-ee" which means "you're pretty", and "ah-ee-ooh" which means "where's my banana?" and so on. This would be very different from the bird example, because the different sounds are contextual in nature. And this is, presumably, only found in humans besides.

The human analogue would be, say, "be" which means "to exist", and "tell", which means "say something", and if you combine them you get "beetle", which is a kind of bug. To the extent the bird can make sentences, it would be limited to "coo-caw", which would just mean, "you're hot, also, watch out for that cat."

See the difference?

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

“The pyow-hack sequence means something like ‘let’s go’ whereas the pyows by themselves have multiple functions and the hacks are generally used as alarm calls.â€Â

Dr Arnold added: “The implications are that primates, at least, may be able to ignore the usual relationship between an individual call and any meaning that it might convey under certain circumstances.â€Â

See the difference?

I really don't. Sounds like their "language" is actually quite limited from the

info provided by the article: 2 individual sounds, and a combination of the

two.

Dogs growl, bark, moan and use a different combinations of the three to

convey different messages to other dogs and other species.

Bottle-nose dolphins communicate mainly by means of sounds and are

almost always constantly vocal. These sounds includes high-pitched whistles

or squeals and short, pulse-type or squawks eminating from their blowholes,

with an average of 300 sounds per pulse.

Bottle-nose dolphins identify themselves with a signature whistle. A mother

dolphin may whistle to her calf almost continuously for several days after

giving birth. This acoustic imprinting helps the calf learn to identify its

mother.

Of course, none of these examples, including the monkeys, comes

anywhere close to the complexity of human communication.

The monkeys level of complexity in communication and humans' is

drastically different.

Why is there such a huge jump in complexity between the most intelligent

of animals and humans?

With uniformatarian assumptions, one would expect a gradual gradient.

 

[Packrat]

by posting what you did you weaken your case by lowering the status of humans to other animals. Isn't this what you and others that frequent this board have been trying NOT to do?

I think God first created humans they were greater than all other creatures of his. This doesn't mean that they will continue to be greater. Who is better? A simple monkey who lives a normal monkey's life or a human who uses his greater power to inflict great destruction upon God's creation? :-D

Just because God created a good world doesn't mean that it is today a good world (even though I believe it to be in many points a good world still).

 

[KaerbEmEvig]

It has been proven that bottlenose dolphins use names to call amongst one another, they have diffrent dialects and so on. Dolphins are as intelligent as humans. :

 

[LittleNipper]

It has been proven that bottlenose dolphins use names to call amongst one another, they have diffrent dialects and so on. Dolphins are as intelligent as humans. :

But, do they talk about GOD?

 

[jwu]

We don't know. Why would it matter?

 

[LittleNipper]

We don't know. Why would it matter?

Because if they do not speak of GOD, they could not be make in GOD's image....

 

[KaerbEmEvig]

So you say atheists are not humans? lol!

 

[jwu]

We don't know. Why would it matter?

Because if they do not speak of GOD, they could not be make in GOD's image....

That looks like a double non-sequitur to me - them being made in God's image has nothing to do with them being intelligent, and speaking of God is not a requirement for being made in God's image either.

 

[LittleNipper]

So you say atheists are not humans? lol!

Atheists might be inconsiderate of GOD; however, they are hardly silent concerning GOD. In fact, I find that Atheists talk of GOD almost more than Christians do. It seems they send much of their time trying to prove to themselves that GOD doesn't exist, and that takes some effort.....

 

[LittleNipper]

We don't know. Why would it matter?

Because if they do not speak of GOD, they could not be make in GOD's image....

That looks like a double non-sequitur to me - them being made in God's image has nothing to do with them being intelligent, and speaking of God is not a requirement for being made in God's image either.

Well, if GOD is invisible, then, GOD doesn't have an image as we understand image, or at least shape is not what GOD was speaking of........