Chimpanzee Similarities

Chimpanzees have always been thought to be quite similar to humans when we are speaking on purely physical terms, but only in recent years we have come to take notice that these apes share features that are just like humans. In "Among the Wild Chimpanzees", the behavior of the chimps witnessed by Jane Goodall presented to everyone how they do in fact mimic some human-like behavior. Not only did the chimps in the wild exhibit these behaviors, but so did the chimps used in the lab. (Chimp Talk) The cultural behavior, language skills, and tool making abilities in the chimps show us that their behavior demonstrate human features, yet lack the ability to communicate on our level of intelligence. Therefore, the parallelisms in behavior are obvious, but the features of chimps are just not as developed as humans.

Most of the evidence that these apes can learn and understand our language is from their behavior recorded in laboratories. One of her most impressive observations involved a bonobo chimpanzee named Kanzi. Savage-Rumbaugh tried to no avail to train Kanzi's adoptive mother to use a keyboard of symbols. The researchers were surprised to find that Kanzi had been eavesdropping on his mother's lessons and had acquired a substantial vocabulary. From then on, Kanzi was not given structured training like his mother, but was taught while walking through the forest with his trainers. By the

age of 6, Kanzi had acquired a vocabulary of 200 words and was able to construct sentences by combining words with gestures or with other words. (Chimp Talk)

Kanzi's most notable accomplishment was captured on videotape: he was told, "Give the dog a shot," and he proceeded to inject his stuffed dog with a syringe. Savage-Rumbaugh argues that Kanzi's language was initially dependent upon contextual cues, but that once he mastered a substantial vocabulary, he could respond accurately to 70% of novel commands from a concealed speaker. Critics

...