Talk about perfect timing, check out this story on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/20/ape.research.ap/index.html
Great apes to learn human behaviors
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh sounds like a proud mother when she speaks about her brood of bonobos, eight ultra-intelligent apes that will take part in unique language research meant to shed light on their nature and maybe our own.
The first two bonobos will make the 16-hour road trip from the Language Research Center at Georgia State University to their new $10 million, 13,000-square-foot home near downtown Des Moines later this month. All eight -- three females and five males -- will arrive at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa by mid-May.
Bonobos, a species of ape from the Congo, are the most like humans, Savage-Rumbaugh said. They constantly vocalize "as though they are conversing" and often walk upright.
"If you want to find a human-like creature that exists in a completely natural state ... that creature is the bonobo," said Savage-Rumbaugh, an experimental psychologist who is one of the world's leading ape-language researchers.
If the apes are able to learn language, music and art, once thought to be distinct to humans, then "it strongly suggests that those things are not innate in us," she said.
"Those are things that we have created, and create anew and build upon from one generation to the next ..." she said. "Then we have the power to change it and make it any other way. We could have an ideal world, if we but learn how to do it."
The bonobos will be able to cook in their own kitchen, tap vending machines for snacks, go for walks in the woods and communicate with researchers through computer touchscreens. The decor in their 18-room home includes an indoor waterfall and climbing areas 30 feet high.
The longevity of the project is unlike any other.
The animals, which have a life span of up to about 50 years, will be allowed to mate and have families -- and develop cultures that will be studied for generations to come, Savage-Rumbaugh said.
Visitors are allowed, but they must understand that the Great Ape Trust is not a zoo, she said.
Using a network of cameras and computers, the bonobos can see visitors who ring the doorbell -- and will be able to choose through a computer touchscreen who will be permitted into a secured viewing area.
"Only if they want to open the door can you enter," Savage-Rumbaugh said.
Karen Killmar, an associate curator at the San Diego Zoo, said the Great Ape Trust is unlike other research programs.
"There's studies all over the place in terms of intelligence and learning ability and behavior," she said, "but to be able to sort of pull it all together in one place I think is a wonderful opportunity to give us a much clearer picture of what our closest relatives are."
Evidence for evolution, Installment 2: Cytochrome c
by seattleniceguy 53 Replies latest jw friends
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AlmostAtheist
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seattleniceguy
Great article, Dave.
Bonobos pose an interesting challenge to creationist theology in a lot of ways. Here are some interesting facts about them (from: http://www.answers.com/topic/bonobo):
Bonobos were discovered in 1928 , by American anatomist Harold Coolidge , represented by a skull in the Tervuren museum in Belgium that had been thought to be a juvenile chimpanzee's, though credit for the discovery went to the German Ernst Schwarz , who published the findings in 1929 . They are distinguished by an upright gait, a matriarchal and egalitarian culture, and the prominent role of sexual intercourse in their society.
Bonobos diverged from Common Chimpanzees after the last Common Chimpanzee ancestor diverged from its last common ancestor with humans . Since no species other than ourselves have survived from the human line of that branching, Bonobos and Common Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing approximately 98.4% of their DNA with us. Bonobos passed the mirror-recognition test for self-awareness in 1994 . They communicate through primarily vocal means, in a language that has not yet been deciphered; however, we do understand some of their natural hand gestures, such as their invitation to play. Two Bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha have been taught a vocabulary of about 400 words which they can type using a special keyboard of lexigrams (geometric symbols), and can respond to spoken sentences. Some, such as philosopher Peter Singer , argue that these results qualify them for the same rights as humans.
Sexual intercourse plays a major role in Bonobo society, being used as a greeting , a means of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation , and a favor traded by the females in exchange for food (see prostitution ). Bonobos are the only non-human apes to have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: tongue kissing, face-to-face vaginal intercourse, oral sex, genital rubbing between females, and "penis-fencing" between males. This happens within the immediate family as well as outside of it. Bonobos do not form permanent relationships with partners.
SNG
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Midget-Sasquatch
Awesome article AA!
Just speculating here, but along the lines of Satanus' info on similarities between people and animals, there's one interesting tidbit, if I'm recalling it accurately.
Narkissos brought up thinking symbolically and expressing it through language as a key human trait, and I think he's right on with that.
Now this is where I may be wrong, but I think I heard it's been found that people and apes have about the same number of phonemes in their vocabulary. Apes apparently are limited in how they relate phonemes to form a "word" or "object". So that really limits their range of expression. People can combine phonemes in many more ways and modify these symbols, and so vastly increase their range of expression. I don't know what change in the neural makeup is needed for that but there's one possible stepping stone for selection to work on and build that gap between the two.
They've also found a direct relationship between the size of a mammal's neocortex and the size of its social groups. (Makes sense that it takes a good deal of grey matter to keep track of individuals, how you should recipricate etc.)
Being more socially skilled, can give you an edge in a group nowadays. Maybe that was also a factor, to some extent, in more archaic bands. If it fetches you more mates, selection can begin to build on that. It may seem circular because the process is iterative in nature and in this particular case I'm postulating the people themselves contributing to shaping their evolution to an extent. It may explain how those traits that aren't usually critical for survival, can be kept and not lost, because they can make life more interesting.
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hooberus
Michael Denton wrote:
A response to Denton's work can be viewed here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/denton.html"One of the most remarkable features of these new biochemical discoveries is undoubtedly the way in which the pattern of molecular diversity seem to correspond to the predictions of typology." Evolution: A Theory in Crisis page 290.*
The same arcticle also appears on talkorigins. I have seen it before and I think that there may be problems contained on the cyctochrome c discussion. I hope to post some info on this.