I am glad that I read about this 30-year-old parrot and the language studies of Irene Pepperberg. It reads like a really long article from Time or Newsweek. I do think that animals "think" more like us than we can show right now and that Pepperberg's studies are some of the first steps to prove this. I want to see what is written about Koko, the famous signing gorilla. Danika, have you read much about that?
2 comments:
I haven't read anything, but we watched a documentary in the linguistics class taught by the teacher who thought it was absolute crap. I think you're probably right, they do think more like us than we can prove. The problem is it's a continuum, and it's hard to mark exactly where "human-like" thought begins and ends.
Christine-
I read a book last year about chimps & sign language called Nim Chimpsky (clever name!). The chimp, Nim, was raised as human, but when funding ran out, he was abandoned. The book was about the chimp's abilities & limitations, but also addressed the ethics of this type of research & human moral obligations toward research animals. Interesting read, very sad.
Mary
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