Gorilla DNA; Gorillas R\' Us; speech (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 17:11 (4518 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Now the chimps started speech, but anatomically they are not built for it, cannot comprehend it, and what is described is light years removed from it. When is the last time youspoke in clicks, grunts and hoots. too much grant money chasing too little thought:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120531135641.htm-Once again, David, my thanks for keeping us informed on so many fronts. My view of this subject seems to be far less sceptical than yours, probably because you are convinced that humans are different in kind rather than degree. Other animals are just as dependent on communication as we are, but of course they can only use whatever physical means are at their disposal. We don't know how our speech organs managed to become so versatile, but if gorillas use different face movements and lip-smackings to convey their own meanings, so be it. Bees dance and birds sing and some animals, like elephants, can emit sounds inaudible to the human ear. Recently we even read that plants may have means of communication. What we know for sure is that other animals DO communicate, and the fact that we do not understand their clicks, grunts and hoots, their songs, their movements, their facial expressions is a sign of our ignorance, not theirs. We may be hugely more advanced in language than they are, but their language has proved adequate for their needs, and if we accept that language is a system of communicating information, we must accept that in this as in so many other fields, they have shown us the way ... since we came so late on the scene. We have simply developed what we inherited from them. Our planes are their wings, our houses are their nests, our schools are their games, our meat industry is their hunt, our farm industry is their gathering, and our language is their grunts. Yes, we have art, philosophy and self-awareness to the nth degree, and of course chimps and gorillas R not us. No-one ever said they were. But we owe them, we are more like them than we care to acknowledge, and if all this research leads us to greater empathy with them because of all the common factors, I for one will not begrudge the grant money.