Animal Communication Module 85 Animal Communication Animals clearly

Animal Communication Module 85

Animal Communication • Animals clearly communicate with each other, but is that language? • Rumbaugh’s bonobo chimp experiments with Kanzi show that chimps can reach language comprehension of roughly a 2 ½ year old human (pg. 295) • Louis Herman trained bottlenose dolphins to respond to sounds and gestures. • Irene Pepperberg trained Alex the parrot a 100 -word vocabulary and he can answer questions with phrases • Karl von Frisch & the dance of the honeybees

Is it Language? – Chimps taught sign language. Washoe (click to learn more) • 200 signs • New phrases (open eat drink, dirty good) • Chimps teaching chimps Nim Chimpsky • 20, 000 signs, half of which were two-sign combinations. • At a first look, his signing appeared to be structured, but in fact most just repetitive. • “Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me you. ” • View a quick overview of Washoe & Koko (7 min) • View Kanzi the chimp’s ability to understand spoken language (2 min) and use of lexigrams • Chimps can also use simple hand signals: ABC News Report (1: 30)

Animal Language • Play: “If Only They Could Talk” (10: 07) from Scientific American Frontiers • (Segment #19 on DVD) • What is the Clever Hans Effect? • How do researchers guard against this? • If Time Allows: Play “Animal Language” (14: 39) • (Segment #27 from The Mind DVD) • Watch up to where they discuss the Washoe Project • Do animals like Chimps possess language skills? • Do Chimps show a culture like that of humans?

Do animals think? Apes & dolphins have shown the ability to recognize themselves in mirrors demonstrating “self-awareness” What Are You Looking At?

Do Animals Think? • Using Concepts: • Alex the Parrot can identify the color of the four alike objects presented to him when asked, “What color four? ” • Video 1(3 minutes) • Video 2 (2 minutes) • Using Tools: • Caledonian Crows will use a stick to get to a grub in a tree. • Chimps will use a blade of grass to get termites • See more examples on pg. 868