Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« Letter from a Binge Drinker | This Week in Party Crasher »

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Science News from the Animal Kingdom

Posted by Charles Mudede on Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 2:36 PM

In a paper published in December in Primates, an international journal of primatology that provides a forum on all aspects of primates in relation to humans and other animals, Great Ape Trust scientist Dr. Serge Wich and his colleagues provide the first-ever documentation of a primate mimicking a sound from another species without being specifically trained to do so. Bonnie, a 30-year-old female orangutan living at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., began whistling—a sound that is in a human’s, but not an orangutan’s, repertoire—after hearing an animal caretaker make the sound...

...The behavior goes against the argument that orangutans have no control over their vocalizations and the sounds are purely emotional—that is, an involuntary response to stimuli such as predator

With that dumb whistling down goes yet another section of the great wall that for centuries has separated us from the rest.

Comments (17) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Next thing you know various species will be obsessively blogging about Amanda Knox, and the wall will be down completely.

Posted by Greg F. on December 14, 2008 at 3:04 PM

"No control over their vocalizations" seems kind of patronizing for that level of ape.

Posted by The CHZA on December 14, 2008 at 3:14 PM

When they stop flinging their feces at me, I'll consider inviting them over for dinner.

Posted by Urgutha Forka on December 14, 2008 at 3:21 PM

"No control over their vocalizations" ...well, fuck, I know a lot of humans with that problem.

Posted by Leslie N. on December 14, 2008 at 3:22 PM

Centuries? Like, since 1700? What you are talking about, I will never know.

Posted by ams on December 14, 2008 at 3:27 PM

He's talking about Aristotle.

Posted by elenchos on December 14, 2008 at 3:52 PM

But what tune--Dock of the Bay?

Mardi Gras in New Orleans?

The Mayberry theme?

Posted by PC on December 14, 2008 at 4:05 PM

In the human race, we have Einstein and we have...well, really stupid people.

So, possibly among orangutans, there are some who are the Einsteins...who "paradigm" shift and say "why not whistle"?

First the other orangutans ignore, then they laugh, laugh, then they fight, then the Whistling Orangutan wins!

Posted by Mahatma Ghandi on December 14, 2008 at 5:11 PM

If you ever see the series "Orangutan Island", you will see that this ape is evolving, learning to live in groups, forage for certain items, all kinds of new behaviors they've been forced into since they're being slaughtered in their rain forest habitats.
They're sweet creatures, more deserving of existence than a lot of humans I have seen.

Posted by eliza on December 14, 2008 at 5:12 PM

Here is a baby orangutan playing peek-a-boo. It may well be the cutest thing you'll see all day. http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2008/12…

Posted by Electra on December 14, 2008 at 6:08 PM

@3: Have you checked your back for pasted-on bulls-eyes? :-D

Or, à la Far Side: "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal."

Posted by rob on December 14, 2008 at 6:30 PM

@10: until orangutans learn not to pick their noses in public, I'm still pulling rank.

Posted by TVDinner on December 14, 2008 at 6:37 PM

Choosing mimicry, and thus vocal learning as a behavior that might set humans apart from other animals is wishful thinking. Primates as a group are pretty lackluster in this regard. Yes, humans are different from all other primates because they commonly mimic, and produce learned vocalizations, but many other animals do this. Many birds, bats and whales learn their vocalizations. Quite a few species of birds can learn to produce the vocalizations of other species.
And more - one species can even learn to understand the meaning of vocalizations produced by other species! (birds, monkeys can understand alarm calls of other species)
While our use of language does blow all other species away, there are lots of individual aspects of it that aren't special.

One last note: leave it to primatologists to tout their sample size of...1(!) as "ground breaking."

Posted by onion on December 14, 2008 at 9:58 PM

but @1, I luv u.

Posted by onion on December 14, 2008 at 9:59 PM

My bird has taken vocalizations I've taught him and adapted them for his own use. A wolf whistle he uses means "I really don't like this" The head nod I taught him means flat out "No" and two clicks means "I like this". Another bird I had did the same thing. So when you teach a bird to immitate sounds and motions, watch to see what they might be telling you.

Posted by Vince on December 15, 2008 at 6:09 AM

Hi,

I appreciate the concern which is been rose. The things need to be sorted out because it’s not about the individual but it can be with everyone.
Jimmy

arizona drug rehab

Posted by Jimmy on December 15, 2008 at 6:26 AM

@8,

Good point, even though I can't tell whether you mean it facetiously or not. Bonnie may indeed be an innovator among the orangutans. According to Chomsky's recent ideas about the biological origins of human language, it was merely by accident that human brains began to be able to merge one symbol with another, thus creating a new and more complex symbol--the evolutionary beginning of human syntax.

Chomsky, along with some of his colleagues in the cognitive sciences, believes this may have first happened in the brain of one human individual, and was transferred genetically to other humans. By analogy, some of Bonnie's primate relatives may also be carrying the nascent neurological ability to imitate other species' vocalizations.

But, hey, enough of my pointy-headed intellectual kerfuffle. Let's Slog!

Posted by Jeff Stevens on December 15, 2008 at 8:40 AM