Do Primates have culture?

Rufio -- You're wondering about a reason behind the research? I think there was a push from the military to see if apes could be "useful." I think there was an interest, as with many other creatures, in seeing how intelligent they could be proved to be. That's how it started.

The point now is that apes live a long time and the researchers developed a personal and ethical interest in not offering further harm to these obviously intelligent creatures. One of the important aspects of ASR now is what it may tell us about human growth and development. I encourage you to read the 1997 book, Next of Kin.

I think it is also significant that Washoe, when removed from the research environment, and moved into an outdoor compound, began signing "neologisms" to describe things never before seen. For ducks, she signed "water birds," and for watermelon (which she had never before eaten), she "invented" a term--"water fruit." This has always fascinated me, thank you Piffka for the book reference.

You're welcome, Setanta. They are more clever than I could ever imagine and their neologisms are terrific. That is the most wonderful part of the research. To me, it shows they have creativity and a very different but understandable POV. If only we could understand our dogs like that. (They may be saying more than "Hey, hey, hey!")

Koko's naming of her "pets" especially astounded me. However, if anyone goes to the Koko website and reads the transcripts of her conversations, it quickly becomes apparent that she is simple-minded and easily-distracted. She is also self-absorbed and more open about her body than we're probably comfortable with.

I do wonder how "All Ball" came about. That's hard to sign... doesn't really make sense. It makes me wonder a bit, in general, how much addition/ editing came from Penny and others.

E.G. was reading the book I quoted from after I was done with it (yes I actually typed all that stuff out), and he had an interesting comment re: Koko's teasing. ("Bad gorilla"/ "Funny gorilla", "red!", etc.)

He said something about, yeah, and the anthropologists believed those stories about where babies come from. His point was that there are all of these early anthropological accounts of the strange customs of the "natives", which have since been exposed as "natives" just putting on the anthropologists.

Nice bit about that in a book by Paul Stoller, an anthropologist who wrote a highly subjective account about sorcery among the Songhay people in Niger. When he first arrived, he attempted to surveys of various folks in the tribe to get some basic demographic information. One of the questions he asked people was how many and what languages they spoke. After interviewing a few dozen people, one guy asks him, "How many languages did so and so tell you he speaks?"

"Five."

"He's lying. He only speaks two languages."

So Stoller goes back to the other guy and confronts him. After a long and heated argument, the guy admits that the other man was wrong: he actually only speaks Songhay. Moreover, the man who exposed him lied about how many languages he spoke, too.

So Stoller goes back to is original informant and confronts him. "Did you lie to me, too?" he asks.

"Yes," says the man.

"Why?"

To which the man answers, "Why not? What difference is it to me whether I tell you the truth or not?"

After revisiting all of the other people he interviewed, Stoller found that most of the people had lied to him, and in fact many had been laughing with each other about it -- along the lines of, "I told him I know spells! What a dupe!"

Ha! Yeah, exactly. ("He's asking where babies come from? Who doesn't know where babies come from? What a dupe!")

All Ball was a Manx kitty... no tail. If you ever see one, they look goofy for a cat. That's what I thought the name was about. Here's a picture... whoops, that's a little big... but see how rounded their back looks? All ball! I think if the trainers were going to make up stuff they'd frankly be more creative and provide a better narration. (See Koko's conversations... she isn't too bright or very forthcoming.)

Little item about anthropologists: this semester I tried to do a little project where I went and interviewed anthropology profs. here to see if I could describe the professional culture -- common ways of describing experience, career motifs (i.e., first fieldwork as intiation, that sort of thing). I figured they should be amenable to being studied, right -- given the way they use the lives of their subjects?

Nobody was responsive. One made an excuse about having a doctor's appointment, and when I tried to reschedule she never responded. And she was the only one who would even return calls, emails.

I wouldn't think much of it, except that the other faculty I've approached here have been very open and accommodating. I thougt it was interesting, anyway.

Oh, that's so cool! Write a paper.

Power plays, studier/studied -- good stuff.

Piffka, my thing with "All Ball" is that the ASL signs for it are just awkward, it doesn't make sense. Hard to describe. "Ball", fine. "All Ball", with its alliteration and such, just doesn't really make sense to me. Unless Koko was thinking in English and then translating to signs. :-? Still seems a little cutesy, a little "GSL."

Subsequent manxes, "Lipstick" (red) and "Smokey" (gray) make more sense.

I read an account once which a young anthropologist wrote about his own foolishness--i'm sorry that i don't recall more details. He was interviewing an old man from a southwest tribe, and was becoming more and more excited as everything the old man told him about their ancestral legends confirmed what he had just learned in his anthropology seminar at Harvard (?, Yale? some ivy league school). But the old man kept going into one of the houses, and coming back out with the answer. He thought there must be an even older man or woman who was supplying the information, so, the next time it happened, he quietly followed the old man into the house--and discovered that the old man was consulting the survey anthro text which the professor conducting his seminar has written . . .

<snort> Researchers just can't find a good naive subject anymore.

I see what you're saying, Sozobe. All Ball doesn't seem like it would be an easy name to come up with if Koko were signing every letter. I suppose the trainer could have "helped" name the kitten, but it could also be that the ASL they use is so simplified that the lettering isn't a problem. I think that only the first letter or two for most words is signed and not ever fully spelled out. Seems to me it was where that letter is signed (on the ear, on the hand, on the face) that makes the meaning clear.

Koko's newest kitten, btw, is called Moe or Mo-Mo. Makes you wonder where that name came from! I wondered when she'd seen smoke (for the kitten Smoky) but she's been around so long that when she was young the researchers probably thought nothing of smoking near her cage. Who knows? <shrugs>

PatioDog -- What a strange thing for the Anthro. staff to be secretive. I think you should look into that some more.

Piffka, it's really hard to describe -- it's not that she would fingerspell it, I'm going by the ASL signs. It just doesn't make sense in a way I'm obviously not articulating well -- has to to with internal logic. Ball, fine, ALL ball??

Anyway, I think they were/are rigorous in general and am not casting aspersions on the whole project. That just didn't strike me as making any sense.

Yeah, the latest kitten is the same sort of thing. I'm thinking of when my daughter named her first doll, at I think 16 months -- she was babbling this and babbling that (ASL babbles) then "pink" was in the middle of it all and I suggested, "Pinky?", and she said "yes!" Does that mean that she named her doll "Pinky", though?

Hmmm, who knows the mind of a gorilla? All Ball was a long time ago and very little to go by. I see that neither of those words are among Koko's supposed 48 favorite words.

I didn't realize that all the cats were Manx, maybe they were afraid she'd be a little rough and pick them up by their tails? Maybe they would look more like gorillas without a tail? So many questions!

As for Pinky... I'd say that was a collaborative effort! Nothing wrong with that either. (Funny, I used to have a Duroc pig named Pinky. Really, I did! We didn't eat her, but we ate her brother, Umber.)

The book I have says that they showed Koko pictures of different kinds of cats, and she chose the manx. (Then after All Ball, she wanted more of the same.)

Right, the collaborative effort part is pretty much exactly my point; I can see something like; (Gorilla babble gorilla babble) cat (gorilla babble) ball(gorilla babble) all (gorilla babble) something else and then a person repeating to her, "All Ball?" and Koko saying "yes!"

I would think you would learn more about human growth and development by studying humans. I was talking about the study of apes being used to understand apes, not the study of apes being used to understand humans.

Rufio - you seem to have a very compartmentalized view of things!!!!!

In my view, and experience, ethology can shed - and seemingly has shed, enormous light on both how the studied animals are - which is worthwhile and fascinating in itself - but it can also shed light on our own arrangements, because of the differing ways of understanding and analysing things that it opens up.

The study of our closest relatives, possibly living in ways that resemble our pre-history, seems to me potentially enormously illuminating about our own past and how we came to be who we are.

These things are not either/or - the study of children and adults continues apace - with enormous benefit - especially, at the moment, in the field of infant mental health.

Ethology in the wild continues.

Study of captive animals continues.

All have benefits - who knows where or when new dicoveries which have real import are going to arise?

The way you talk, it sounds as though you think if one happens the other does not. This is not how it is.

I mean that I think that study oriented towards understanding humans happens at the expense of study oriented towards understanding apes, not that studies involving apes are phasing out studies involving humans. Or that's just how it seems to me anyway, specifically speaking about language and communication - people are studying them to determine where to draw the line between humans and animals in regard to their abilities to master human language rather than studying the apes themselves in the same way we would study a human culture. We aren't THAT close to apes anyway, we're just closer than we are to other animals that are still around. There are many many more who aren't who would have been closer.

It is possible to understand humans only by studying those primate species that are closest to us both genetically and in terms of common ancestors. By defining what we have and they do not the boundary between ourselves and other primates is defined and what we are becomes manifest. It is possible to learn what it is to be human only by defining what it is not, and that is a comparative study.

truth
No doubt there is value in the comparative study of higher Primates. I don't think we would learn much by comparing ourselves to roaches, apples and oranges, you know. But the similarities between us an "the apes" is the reason primatologists study apes. Through them we can get insights into the nature of proto-cultural factors and by looking at their social organizations we can generate ideas about our pre-human circumstances. But I agree with Rufio, that we must ALSO study each species in terms of its own nature and circumstances. I would never study a Maya Indian solely by means of an examination of Yaquis, but I have no doubt that comparisons can be helpful.