#i mean i can see how karen could be seen as a sort of ariadne to navidson

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saw someone say Will Navidson is 'Daedalus/Minos larp-ing as Theseus'. ok Kellog-Antwerk truther

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Blog: Communicating With Animals

Ariadne Villanueva

Gina Srmabekian

English 115

12/3/2019

                               Communicating With Chimpanzees:

    Monkeys can talk to humans! Well, not actually, but chimpanzees can communicate with us. It has been proven time and time again that monkeys perform certain gestures to communicate something to someone else. Over the course of this blog, I will be mentioning how MANY scholarly sources can defend this fact. 

    Have you ever watched this documentary called “Project Nim”? First of all, if not, I 100% recommend. It’s probably the most entertaining, informative, and saddest documentary I’ve ever seen. Trust me, you’ll like it. Anyway, this documentary is based on the life of a baby chimpanzee and his journey into adulthood. Although, there is one main focus to his life and why it’s even being documented. A group of scholars are raising him by themselves and teaching him sign language. The purpose of this experiment is to see whether or not another species can learn to communicate with humans through a form of language. Throughout the course of the documentary, we get to see Nim learn more and more sign language through practice and discipline. Nim then becomes able to communicate things like when he wants to play or eat or use the restroom. This proves how chimpanzees are able to learn communication. The documentary takes a pretty ugly turn when a research facility takes Nim into their custody. This is when the communication between chimpanzees and humans is really shown. Nim and a couple of his peers are taken and tested on. While in this research facility, these chimpanzees continue to sign to the humans as a form of crying out for help. They use the sign for “hug”, “out”, and “help” as a way of begging for freedom. If that isn’t the saddest thing you’ve ever heard than you are a monster.  To try and sum up this documentary as best as I possibly can, before I go on an even longer tangent, chimpanzees are unable to learn language because they cannot comprehend grammar. Although, this does not mean that they cannot learn to communicate with humans. Nim, the chimpanzee was unable to form grammatically correct sentences, but he was able to communicate to others through sign. 

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    If you’re not that into movies, there is this great book written by Karen J. Fowler with a similar message. The book is based on this story of this family that takes in a chimpanzee as a part of an experiment and raises it as their own. Very similarly, this chimpanzee can communicate with the family members but cannot form grammatically correct sentences. In this book, although fictional, it proves that chimpanzees can communicate with humans and when educated a certain way can understand more than what we think is possible. If I could explain the plot of the novel in a few sentences it would be this: A family takes in a chimpanzee and raises it with their own children as a part of an experiment. As a result, the children pick up chimpanzee behavior and the chimpanzee picks up some human behavior. This affects both parties’ lives greatly. For example, Rosemary, the daughter, gets bullied by her peers for climbing trees. The chimpanzee, aka Fern, is very much affected because when she is inevitably taken away and forced to live amongst her kind, she is beat into becoming a true chimpanzee. This shows how behavior that is “unnatural” can be taught just as communication can and is taught.

��   What do you know about animal cognition? To be honest with you, I wasn’t even sure of what that was prior to this assignment. Although, after doing my little research, nearly each article has come to the same conclusion. The common conclusion is that basically, chimpanzees, baboons, and animals of this sort all have great mental capacities. In one particular article written by Marie Bourjade, she concludes that there is evidence of purposeful communication between baboons. Another article written and experiment conducted by David Leavens and William Hopkins reveals that chimpanzees make intentional gestures. I don’t want to bore you to sleep, but isn’t this fascinating! Think about it, chimpanzees physically point at things like humans. The fact that they can exhibit gestures like that with the same intentions as humans is pretty amazing.

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    At first I wasn’t very interested in the matter at all, to be honest with you. I was only researching the topic because I was required to for my english class. Although, as time went on and more information was presented to me, I became more and more intrigued. For example,  Winthrop N. Kellog conducted an experiment with the theory that infant children and chimpanzees share some similar tendencies in their gestures. It may not seem all that amazing at first thought or glance, but to read about how the chimpanzee brain is so comparable to that of a human’s still boggles my mind. Many of the articles state the same hypothesis and I don’t want to bore you, but this proves the credibility of the theory. How is that almost every experiment conducted resulted with the same conclusion? If you were not a believer before, you will be now.  

        <This is going to be you after reading my blog.