Find some method of communication that the mammal can use, and raise it in a society of children that use that method of communication. See if its behavior tracks that of the children in terms of intelligence.
I believe such an experiment has already been performed, involving deaf children and using sign language as the communication method, and some kind of ape as the mammal. It supposedly actually adapted very comfortably, behaving just as the children (except that they taught it to ask for drugs), but they had to cut off the experiment on the grounds that, after another year of growth, the ape would be too strong and therefore too dangerous to risk leaving in the presence of children.
I can’t find a cite at the moment, but I remember a friend telling me about this and it checked out in an online search.
Human languages (including sign) are adapted for human beings. While there’s some flexibility, I wouldn’t expect animals using human language to be at their best.
One major difference between humans and apes is this:
Humans teach each other. When we discover something new, we immediately go and tell everybody. Apes don’t. If an ape discovers something, it doesn’t spread to the other members of its social group until they happen to watch the ape using its discovery. And apes that are taught sign language don’t pass it on to their children.
Which means apes don’t get the benefit of cultural evolution (or gene-culture co-evolution). I wonder if that was a key barrier to the development of ape culture.
Hm, I thought I had a counterexample, but it looks like it was just a case of learning by imitation. Also, vervet monkeys teach their proto-language (of “eagles!”, “snakes!”, and “leopards!”) to their young by smacking them when they give the wrong call.
As for other mammals, there are cases of them teaching each other when they learn something new, for example when an elephant learned how to unlock her cage.
Yes, and there’s been a lot of work with African Greys already. Irene Pepperberg and her lab have done most of the really pioneering work. They’ve shown that Greys can recognize colors, small numbers and in some cases produce very large vocabs. There’s also evidence that Grey’s sometimes overcorrect. That is, they apply complete grammatical rules to conjugate/decline words even when the words are irregular. This happens with human children as well. Thus for example, human children will frequently say “runned” when they mean “ran” or “mouses” when they mean “mice” and many similar examples. This is strong evidence that they are internalizing general rules rather than simply repeating words they’ve heard. Since Greys do the same thing, we can conclude that parrots aren’t just parroting.
The BBC appears to have at least partially withdrawn their article about the parrot in question:
Note: This story about animal communication has replaced an earlier one on this page which contained factual inaccuracies we were unable to correct. As a result, the original story is no longer in our archive. It is still visible elsewhere, via the link below:
‘Parrot oratory stuns scientists’
Next step: “Okay, what should I do to test this?”
Find some method of communication that the mammal can use, and raise it in a society of children that use that method of communication. See if its behavior tracks that of the children in terms of intelligence.
I believe such an experiment has already been performed, involving deaf children and using sign language as the communication method, and some kind of ape as the mammal. It supposedly actually adapted very comfortably, behaving just as the children (except that they taught it to ask for drugs), but they had to cut off the experiment on the grounds that, after another year of growth, the ape would be too strong and therefore too dangerous to risk leaving in the presence of children.
I can’t find a cite at the moment, but I remember a friend telling me about this and it checked out in an online search.
Human languages (including sign) are adapted for human beings. While there’s some flexibility, I wouldn’t expect animals using human language to be at their best.
What they need to do is include like 5 or 6 apes with the children and then when they’re removed they can continue socializing with each other.
The problem is coming up with methods of communication. Aside from apes and sign language I can’t think of any…
One major difference between humans and apes is this:
Humans teach each other. When we discover something new, we immediately go and tell everybody. Apes don’t. If an ape discovers something, it doesn’t spread to the other members of its social group until they happen to watch the ape using its discovery. And apes that are taught sign language don’t pass it on to their children.
Which means apes don’t get the benefit of cultural evolution (or gene-culture co-evolution). I wonder if that was a key barrier to the development of ape culture.
Hm, I thought I had a counterexample, but it looks like it was just a case of learning by imitation. Also, vervet monkeys teach their proto-language (of “eagles!”, “snakes!”, and “leopards!”) to their young by smacking them when they give the wrong call.
As for other mammals, there are cases of them teaching each other when they learn something new, for example when an elephant learned how to unlock her cage.
African gray parrots and spoken language.
Yes, and there’s been a lot of work with African Greys already. Irene Pepperberg and her lab have done most of the really pioneering work. They’ve shown that Greys can recognize colors, small numbers and in some cases produce very large vocabs. There’s also evidence that Grey’s sometimes overcorrect. That is, they apply complete grammatical rules to conjugate/decline words even when the words are irregular. This happens with human children as well. Thus for example, human children will frequently say “runned” when they mean “ran” or “mouses” when they mean “mice” and many similar examples. This is strong evidence that they are internalizing general rules rather than simply repeating words they’ve heard. Since Greys do the same thing, we can conclude that parrots aren’t just parroting.
Yes, it is! I hadn’t heard that before. Is there a journal article somewhere?
I’m not aware of any journal articles for overcorrection and a quick Google search doesn’t turn any up. I’ll go bug my ornithology friends. In the meantime, here’s a BBC article that discusses the matter: http://web.archive.org/web/20060519061120/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3430481.stm . They give the example of N’kisis using “flied” for the past tense of “fly” rather than “flew.”
Edit: Fixed link. Edit: Link’s accuracy is questionable. See Mass Driver’s remarks below.
The link seems to be dead or misspelled.
Misspelled. Edited for correct link.
The BBC appears to have at least partially withdrawn their article about the parrot in question:
New BBC News Article
skeptic article about the parrot
Hmm, that’s very interesting. I think I’ve seen the overcorrection claim before but then definitely don’t have anything resembling a good citation.