A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
The argument that apes have never asked a question "is a classic example of overstatement," said Heidi Lyn, a professor at the University of South Alabama's Comparative Cognition and Communication Lab at the Department of Psychology and Marine Science.
"There is plenty of evidence of apes asking questions, although the structure may not look exactly like humans asking questions," Lyn explained.
https://www.snopes.com/articles/467842/apes-questions-communicate/
If a chimpanzee looks its handler in the eyes and points to a banana, it may be interpreted that the ape is asking to have the banana. This, Hobaiter said, shows apes are capable of asking questions.
Obviously not in the spirit of the question. No curiosity, no attempt to learn about what's going on around them. The article has no examples of real questions, so to me I'd say the meme rings true.
Yeah, when my cat meows, it is “asking” for snacks. But it’s not inquiring about snacks, or curious about where the snacks come from or why cats enjoy snacking so much.
Granted, many humans don’t ask such questions either, but that’s because intellectual acuity is on a spectrum also occupied by non-human animals, at least in the realm of being an incurious dumbass.
How do you know your cat isnt curious, is it survival bias. All the curious cats died
Cats don’t need to ask questions about the world because they are scientists and will figure it out for themselves if they don’t get shown the answers. They know where the snacks come from, at least in regards to their own world, that’s why they come running when they hear the package.
They knock stuff over to see what happens. They meow for treats to see what happens. They sit on your face to wake you up to see what happens. They get into things just to see what’s in them.
And when the result is something they want, they try it again to see if the result is consistent. Reproducible.
That’s why the best way to get a cat to stop doing something they do to you is to ignore them. They meow to wake you up for food? They do that because it’s been working. Stop responding, and the behavior will also stop.
What you are doing is anthropomorphizing an animal's behavior and ascribing intent behind the action without having any substantial basis for that claim.
Cats are intelligent, yes, but what you have described is completely devoid of any understanding of animal behavior or psychology.
It’s not that cats can’t ask questions. It’s that they can’t ask abstract questions. That’s quite different.
They can, but they don't know how to dumb it down enough for their minions to understand.
My cat has asked where my wife is. She has a very specific meow for each of us that she uses when she's looking for us. One day while my wife was at work, cat meowed for my wife. Told the cat she'd be home on a couple hours. Cat curled up by the window, satisfied. Next time it happened, I teased her and tried to play with her. She kept wandering around the house looking for my wife until I told her she was at work. Smart little bastard.
I think there are several separate cognitive abilities needed to ask questions. Curiosity (which is very common), complex communication (much less common), and advanced theory of mind (exists on a spectrum, you need not only awareness of your own mental state, or metacognition, but awareness that others have a mental state that is distinct from your own. Humans actually develop this ability slowly throughout childhood, and it goes through stages). Though there are other species with similar traits, it might well be the case that humans are the only living species in possession of all of them simultaneously.
asking to have the banana
Yeah that's just a quirk of the English language in that "ask" means both inquiring, trying to learn information from a response, and request, a communication to another that the "asker" wants something.
That's crazy. You think monkeys aren't curious about the world around them?
They just don't look to humans for answers, they look to humans for treats
Well, curiosity comes in different stripes. Investigating your environment is one thing. Asking second-order questions is another.
“May I have food?” vs “Why am I here?” and “What is the nature of consciousness?”
"Why are we here?"
"One of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff? I don't know man, but it keeps me up at night."
"What? I mean why are we here, in this box canyon in the middle of nowhere?"
Also
apes have never asked one question
WE ARE APES. We ask questions all the time.
Ook, ook-ook?
Yes, sir. The reference desk is right over there. But you'd know that, being the Librarian, right?
Ook.
I’m pretty confident most scientists studying animals have stated that apes have never asked a question. It’s pretty clear on record that only two ever have, both African Grey parrots.
Yeah, the moment I read that, I thought it sounded like bullshit. I doubt there's a database of every sign language interaction with apes that proves that no ape has ever asked a question.
And yet the scientists that did those studies stated that the animals never asked a question. Those are all other researchers claiming after the fact that questions were asked.
This right here. Humans assume so much based on their experiences and interpretations. It's infuriating the assumptions we make. "That turtle just eats, sleeps and shits! It's clearly not intelligent! It's never read The Hunger Games!" goes back to working to afford a place to eat, sleep and shit while also subjugating others, inciting wars, destroying the planet and reading The Hunger Games
The entire study of great apes and sign language has been based on flawed methodology and subjective and biased interpretation of very small data sets.
Its interesting that apes can recollect abstract symbols. It's even kind of interesting that they can to some extent recollect hand gestures. But it is nothing more than symbolic association at its absolute best. Calling it language is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is taking place. Apes already possess several kinds of 'language' comparable to symbolic association, stuff like emotive language and body language and expressive language. There is no substantive evidence that they are capable of understanding and using an abstract language.
What has largely happened in so called 'studies' on 'sign language' in great apes, has been a lot of animal abuse and fundraising for animal abuse predicated on vague notions of how inspiring the idea of talking apes is. They can't talk. They are nonetheless very interesting creatures and we should be fascinated by them even without them having the ability to speak human language.
The really frustrating part is that they shouldn't have to speak with us for us to feel compassion towards them. The really disgusting part is that wild animals were being abducted from the wild and raised in deplorable conditions while essentially being tormented by disgraced researchers trying to prove that they could talk. They're very well suited to their natural environment (which we are destroying) and are not meant to live lives in concrete cages on the other side of the world being prodded and clicker trained to make vague hand motions. It's just animal cruelty under the guise of scientific research.
You're wrong. I'm a great ape and I can understand abstract language.
You big, hairy ape! Look at you over here, with your big brain and your big ass. So much abstract thinking, and you ain't even got a prehensile tail!
You might like the novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. I personally prefer to go into books without knowing much about them, so I will put the premise in a spoiler tag:
the premise
It's about a woman who was raised from birth with a chimpanzee as her twin sister, as she tries to figure out why her sister suddenly disappeared from her life when they were young, and where she is now.
It has a fairly comic tone, which is very welcome given all the trauma.
Tangentially related: the fucked-up experiments they were doing on dolphins, like giving them LSD or keeping one in a flooded, human-style house and trying to teach it English: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong | The Guardian
content warning:
spoiler
it involves a caretaker routinely jerking off the dolphin she lived with, then the project got shut down, and the dolphin was kept in so bad circumstances that it committed suicide after a few weeks
This reminds me of an excerpt in David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs", where he quotes a sailor from like, the East India Company or something.
Something along the lines of "Many suspect the monkeys of the island can speak, but wisely choose not to, knowing they would be taught English and put to work."
Scientists speculate that this is why no ape has ever been on Jeopardy.
Is this true? I was listening to a lecture of I think it was a linguist on apes using sign language, saying that the evidence for them actually understanding language is... not great. Like it appear they just sign until their carers gets the right/expected answer. That they may want to say 'apple', but not finding the word, they can't describe the shape, color, just random words util they hit the correct one, or something like that.
Afaik yes, although I remember reading that (I think) Koko sort of asked something (I think it was "what color" or something like that). But at the same time I remember reading about similar criticism you mentioned, that Koko's signs were often quite random and the caretakers often tried to make fun of the situation that "she's just joking".
I should find that article ...
Edit: I don't know if it was exactly this artice but it was similar
https://bigthink.com/life/ape-sign-language/
Edit 2: or this
Yes, that is the one! Koko and "just joking" I recognize from that lecture.
Longest non-human primate sentence on record:
Give Orange Me Give Eat Orange Me Eat Orange Give Me Eat Orange Give Me You
Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower, son. The Democratic vote for me is right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.
That is pretty impressive. Where is it from?
Imagine a fucking gorilla turning to the scientist and ask:
Does this unit have a soul?
Now I’m sad…
Robin Williams had Coco ask if he would lift his shirt for her. And then she grabbed his nipples.
Sounds more like a request / command than a question.
She probably thought he was another gorilla. He was one hairy mf
Onion News Network - Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday
Well I ain't never asked a gorilla nothin neither
Canadians don't ask questions either. They just make statements, and then add "eh" to the end of the sentence.
Canadians and apes have a lot in common, is what this article is telling me.
Good. They will never question how we treat them. Then they can't rise up and kill us all.