Historical records show that for more than a century, researchers have been conducting experiments to determine whether great apes can communicate not only with their own kind, but also with their human peers.
In light of this, some social media users have argued that while scientists have been communicating with monkeys using sign language for decades, "monkeys have never asked a single question."
In short, whether such claims are true depends largely on how one experiences language, communication, and what a question entails. Decades of scientific research show that apes can communicate with other apes and humans, and some interpretations of these interactions seem to support their ability to ask questions.
Some documents also show that scientists have been communicating with monkeys since at least the 1930s, not the 1960s as claimed in the post above.
What are monkeys?
According to the Center for Great Apes, great apes are primates with hair, fingernails, opposable thumbs, and a larger brain-to-body ratio.
There are two categories of great apes: the 'lesser' and the 'great' apes. The latter category includes gorillas, bonobos, orangutans and chimpanzees.
Do experts think monkeys ask questions?
Language and communication are complex concepts, so defining what a question is can be tricky. For example, if a dog whines at the door, it can be interpreted as a dog asking or telling its owner to let it outside. The same can be said of a cat scratching at its food bowl when it is hungry.
The argument that monkeys have never asked a question "is a classic example of overstatement," said Heidi Lyn, a professor in the Comparative Cognition and Communication Lab at the University of South Alabama's Department of Psychology and Marine Sciences.
"There is plenty of evidence that monkeys ask questions, although the structure may not look exactly like humans asking questions," Lyn explains.
Cat Hobaiter, a professor at the University of St Andrews who specializes in ape cognition and communication, said that "there are plenty of descriptions in multiple enculturated ape studies where the apes are 'asking questions'."
Asking questions can take many forms. If a chimpanzee looks its master in the eye and points to a banana, it can be interpreted as if the ape is asking for the banana. This, Hobaiter argues, shows that apes are capable of asking questions.
"If we assume that in some cases the monkeys used the gestures with ease and understood what they meant, then there are plenty of cases where they asked questions," she added.
Mike Beran, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia's Language Research Center, said researchers have indeed recorded monkeys asking questions.
"In the 1970s, there were documented utterances by a chimpanzee (using a symbol system) that were defined as being in the form of a question," he said, referring to a 1974 New York Times article describing the phenomenon.
However, this did not confirm that the chimpanzee knew she was asking a question, but that those working with her interpreted it that way.
"Other chimpanzees raised in symbol systems like this did not always have questioning symbols, making it difficult to determine whether they would have asked questions [or] "If they were able to," Beran said.
Herbert Terrace, a psychologist known for his work with chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky, argued that the apes' observed communication was prompted by their handlers. In a 2019 Psychology Today blog post, he suggested that apes anticipate what their handlers or teachers might draw and copy it in order to "get a reward."
Research is currently underway to determine whether the communication between monkeys is a statement, a question, or simply coincidence.
A History of Ape-Human Communication
Research into ape communication largely began in the 1930s with a chimpanzee named Gua, who was described in the 1933 book The Ape and the Child. Gua was raised alongside the child of researchers Luella and Winthrop Kellog and studied for comparisons in cognitive development. Although Gua did not learn to speak, she could understand about 100 human words.
Washoe, a chimpanzee born in West Africa in 1965, is considered the first non-human to learn a human language, American Sign Language, according to the nonprofit Friends of Washoe.
In 1972, researchers Ann and David Premack published an article in Scientific American describing Sarah, a young chimpanzee with a "reading and writing vocabulary of about 130 'words.'"
Starting in the 1970s, Koko the gorilla was also trained to communicate using sign language. Her sign vocabulary ranged from basic ones, such as eating and drinking, to emotional ones, such as sad, love and sorry. Koko and her compatriot Michael also learned to understand more than 2,000 words each, according to The Gorilla Foundation.
Like humans, chimpanzees communicate multimodally, meaning they communicate using body language, facial expressions, and gestures-such as pointing-in addition to vocalizations. Some researchers have even hypothesized that multimodal communication in apes "may have supported the emergence of language in human ancestors."
One characteristic that distinguishes humans from other mammals is their use of symbolic communication. That is, the use of symbols, such as letters or words, to assign meaning. In captivity, some chimpanzees have shown an understanding of symbolic communication, and it is thought that some wild populations also use symbolic communication, such as drumming on trees to indicate which direction to travel.
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