Chimps ape man

“Researchers have for the first time taught apes how to speak. Two animals, a pygmy chimp and an orang-utan, have been able to hold conversations with humans.” The report in the Sunday Times on 25 July was crystal clear, its unambiguity strengthened by the headline: “Scientists teach chimpanzees to speak English.” (What next? French? Gaelic?) Contrast this with the Daily Telegraph the next day. “A female chimpanzee has constructed a sentence using the voice of a male scientist in a new demonstration of the language skills of apes,” wrote science editor Roger Highfield. Was he being unduly circumspect? Why such a contrast between assertion and restraint? Both accounts were based on work by Sue and Duane Savage-Rumbaugh at Georgia State University, Atlanta. Both attracted the eye and challenged the mind. Yet Highfield’s version demonstrated how, in skilled hands, caveats and context need not make an article any less interesting than a more flashy piece. The Guardian coverage was equally circumspect. In this case caution seemed necessary on two grounds. Firstly, we have been here before. Twenty years ago, in his book Nim: A Chimpanzee Who Learned Sign Language, Herbert Terrace described his disappointment on discovering that he had been a victim of the ‘Clever Hans’ syndrome. Reviewing videotapes apparently showing him conversing with Nim, Terrace realised that the chimp had simply learned to please him — like Hans, a horse which astounded spectators earlier this century by tapping out answers to simple sums. Both had in fact picked up subconscious promptings from their trainers. Terrace probably also ‘recognized’ signs made by Nim that were random rather than meaningful. Both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph highlighted this background and longstanding disputations on the subject. Highfield, in addition, reported the opinion of some sceptics that animal language experiments are motivated by ideology linked with the animal rights movement.