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Gregg Segal
Teco interacts with a tablet
The intelligence and linguistic acumen of our ape cousins, the bonobos, is well-understood. While chimps, orangutans and other great apes are all famously curious, intelligent, and expressive, the bonobo seems to be even more receptive to the complexities of language. And living in the modern era of tablets and touchscreens is intensifying that affinity.
Ken Schweller, a researcher at the Bonobo Hope Great Ape Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa, has been observing the progress of one Teco, whose father Kanzi is perhaps the most linguistically advanced non-human in the world. Kanzi wields a formidable vocabulary of more than 500 "lexigrams," unique symbols that represent items and actions such as "want," "strawberry" and "now." Kanzi employs all those concepts using touchscreens and tablets — which is a big improvement over the joysticks and picture posters that have been used over the past few decades.
Great Ape Trust
A baby bonobo named Teco plays a children's game on an iPad under the supervision of researcher Sue Savage-Rumbaugh at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa.
Teco has been growing up alongside his illustrious father, and has naturally been interested in the bright, colorful lexigram displays. But researchers were particularly pleased when, at the tender age of 4 months, Teco began using language the way his father does, combining ideas and real-world objects with symbols. At an age when human children would still be working on basic motor skills, Teco was able to request a grape from a researcher using a touchscreen. His familiarity with the language-enabling tablets and screens (one may reasonably call them language prosthetics) is greater and more natural than any ape before him, and Teco may soon excel his father in powers of expression.
Schweller's article in IEEE Spectrum discusses the history and technology associated with bonobos and other apes learning language, and is well worth a read.
More about animals and computers:
- There's an ape for that: Orangutans love iPads
- Homeless cats get their own touchscreen
- Baboons can learn to spot real words
- Animal intellect revealed
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
Leave a Comment:
We should breed them like we do dogs and see how intelligent they can get.
It would be nice to have a link of Teco in action using his language skills. I found the video that the still frame in this story is taken from but not any with him using language. There is a cool video of his father Kanzi though in the linked IEEE Spectrum article - very impressive. And if Teco is even better, even more the reason why I would like to see a video of him.
Since no video of Teco was linked I offer one that I watched recently involving chimps that is well worth the watch - involving counting and memorization in which they outperform humans with ease. (Our ape cousins are not nearly the dumb animals that many people think they are.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPKmcT4lZDk
These little Bonobos are gentle and very smart. Last week there was an article calling them 'hippies' because they prefer to 'make love, not war'.....One of my favorite shows is called "Orangutan Island" -the Orangs facial expressions and feelings are very similar to humans and they are so cute & funny....
So, last night I watched the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This and the "there's an ape for that" article seem a propos.
I watched that last night as well. One of the mysteries has always been just what it was that sparked the change in human conciousness after tens of thousands of years of stagnation, it happened quickly and was wide spread. Might have been alien scientists experimenting to see just what potential and how much they could teach a relatively intelligent naked ape?
What if we had TWO uprisings at the SAME time, apes and robots, and they joined forces against us humans? Turn to left and there's Warrior Apes and then to the right the Terminator robots.
Throw a Zombie Apocalypse in there as well.
so the robot overlords bred intelligent apes as their soldiers for the mass extinction of the human virus infecting the planet earth. afterwards, the zombie was created as a means of cleaning up the organic "mess"
That work?
god thats scary....
Alien interaction instigating the uprising needs to be entertained...
Let's not forget Atlantis's involvement.
This article affirms what i have known all my life. Most people do not realize how intelligent most animals are. Nor do they think animals capable of complex feelings or social skills. Just goes to show you that humans can be pretty darned closed minded.
I agree, Shawn. We've taken all that "we're No. 1" stuff way to seriously. My cats have more ingrained intelligence than most of my neighbors, but then, I'm living in Georgia now.
Ha! I live in Oklahoma where we proudly have one party government. The GOP controls everything, all state-wide offices, the house, the senate, everything.
And not in a good way.
Frankly, I'd welcome an Bonobo take over right now. They certainly seem to be more enlightened than our legislature.
Lets hope that this does not get out of hand...soon they will want to vote. Well, on second thought, maybe they would do better than our current crop of electors.
For the sake of cultural diversity and equitable justice of course they will be granted the vote in order to secure political power base. Then of course a certain party will buy their vote with full multi-generational welfare rights and preferencial job placement and higher education privilege regardless of their ability with possible cries for reparation money for their ancestors being used in research and possible patent payments that resulted in the medical research that saved human lives, next the question of cross species marriage and adoptions. If a certain political agenda plays their cards right they can push cross species devisive tactic to add to the toybox of manipulative toys!
If this Bonobo gets a job before me..I'm gona be pissed.
Ouuu ouuu, ahhh ahhh!