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Related: About this forumApes With Apps
Have you ever watched a toddler play with an iPhone?
Most likely, the child was completely captivated and surprisingly adept at manipulating the tiny icons. Two-year-old Teco is no different. Sitting with his Motorola Xoom tablet, hes rapt, his dark eyes fixed on the images, fingers pecking away at the touch screen. He cant speak, but with the aid of the tablet app I created for him, hes building a vocabulary that will likely total several thousand words. Whats more, hell be able to string those words together into simple sentences and ask questions, tell jokes, and carry on conversations.
Such talents wouldnt seem exceptional in a human child, but Teco is an apea bonobo, to be precise. To the uninitiated, bonobos look very much like chimpanzees, but they are in fact a separate species with distinct physical and behavioral traits. More collaborative and sociable than their chimp cousins, bonobos also seem to be more adept at learning human language. And they are endangered, found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recent estimates put the wild bonobo population at between 10 000 and 50 000. Fewer than 150 live in captivity. Along with the chimpanzee, they are our species closest relatives.
For more than three decades, researchers have been working with a small group of bonobos, including Teco, to explore their amazing cognitive and linguistic abilities. Tecos father, Kanzi, is the groups most famous member: Anderson Cooper has interviewed him, and hes played piano with Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel. Animal lovers worldwide have marveled at his ability to communicate by pointing to abstract symbols. He recognizes nearly 500 of these lexigrams, which he uses to make requests, answer questions, and compose short sentences. The spoken words he understands number in the thousands.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/apes-with-apps/0
Most likely, the child was completely captivated and surprisingly adept at manipulating the tiny icons. Two-year-old Teco is no different. Sitting with his Motorola Xoom tablet, hes rapt, his dark eyes fixed on the images, fingers pecking away at the touch screen. He cant speak, but with the aid of the tablet app I created for him, hes building a vocabulary that will likely total several thousand words. Whats more, hell be able to string those words together into simple sentences and ask questions, tell jokes, and carry on conversations.
Such talents wouldnt seem exceptional in a human child, but Teco is an apea bonobo, to be precise. To the uninitiated, bonobos look very much like chimpanzees, but they are in fact a separate species with distinct physical and behavioral traits. More collaborative and sociable than their chimp cousins, bonobos also seem to be more adept at learning human language. And they are endangered, found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recent estimates put the wild bonobo population at between 10 000 and 50 000. Fewer than 150 live in captivity. Along with the chimpanzee, they are our species closest relatives.
For more than three decades, researchers have been working with a small group of bonobos, including Teco, to explore their amazing cognitive and linguistic abilities. Tecos father, Kanzi, is the groups most famous member: Anderson Cooper has interviewed him, and hes played piano with Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel. Animal lovers worldwide have marveled at his ability to communicate by pointing to abstract symbols. He recognizes nearly 500 of these lexigrams, which he uses to make requests, answer questions, and compose short sentences. The spoken words he understands number in the thousands.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/apes-with-apps/0
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Apes With Apps (Original Post)
pokerfan
Jul 2012
OP
jimlup
(7,968 posts)1. Very cool - thanks!
2on2u
(1,843 posts)2. Kicked and recced.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)3. Wow - cool. Nt
pnwest
(3,265 posts)4. very cool! thx!