Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work on the language capabilities of the bonobo Kanzi has intrigued the world because of its far-reaching implications for understanding the evolution of the human language. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of the filmed language tests. It argues that while the tests prove that Kanzi has language, the even more remarkable manner in which he originally acquired it - spontaneously, in a culture shared with humans - calls for a re-thinking of language, emphasizing its primal cultural dimensions.

The remarkable story of a "talking" chimp, a leading scientist, and the profound insights they have uncovered about our species He has been featured in cover stories in Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic, and has been the subject of a "NOVA" documentary. He is directly responsible for discoveries that have forced the scientific community to recast its thinking about the nature of the mind and the origins of language. He is Kanzi, an extraordinary bonobo chimpanzee who has overturned the idea that symbolic language is unique to our species. This is the moving story of how Kanzi learned to converse with humans and the profound lessons he has taught us about our animal cousins, and ourselves. " . . . The underlying thesis is informative and well argued . . . Savage-Rumbaugh's results are impressive." — The Washington Post "This popular, absorbing, and controversial account is recommended." — Library Journal

Compares and contrasts the ecology, social relations, and cognition of chimpanzees, bonobos, and occasionally, gorillas.

t how close to the human mind this ape has come. "No other animal has done more to renew interest in animal intelligence"--Time 42 intriguing photos.

Does your dog know when you've had a bad day? Can your cat tell that the coffee pot you left on might start a fire? Could a chimpanzee be trained to program your computer? In this provocative book, noted animal expert Clive Wynne debunks some commonly held notions about our furry friends. It may be romantic to ascribe human qualities to critters, he argues, but it's not very realistic. While animals are by no means dumb, they don't think the same way we do. Contrary to what many popular television shows would have us believe, animals have neither the "theory-of-mind" capabilities that humans have (that is, they are not conscious of what others are thinking) nor the capacity for higher-level reasoning. So, in Wynne's view, when Fido greets your arrival by nudging your leg, he's more apt to be asking for dinner than commiserating with your job stress. That's not to say that animals don't possess remarkable abilities--and Do Animals Think? explores countless examples: there's the honeybee, which not only remembers where it found food but communicates this information to its hivemates through an elaborate dance. And how about the sonar-guided bat, which locates flying insects in the dark of night and devours lunch on the wing? Engagingly written, Do Animals Think? takes aim at the work of such renowned animal rights advocates as Peter Singer and Jane Goodall for falsely humanizing animals. Far from impoverishing our view of the animal kingdom, however, it underscores how the world is richer for having such a diversity of minds--be they of the animal or human variety.

Language is regarded, at least in most intellectual traditions, as the quintessential human attribute, at once evidence and source of most that is considered transcendent in us, distinguishing ours from the merely mechanical nature of the beast. Even if language did not have the sacrosanct status it does in our conception of human nature, however, the question of its presence in other species would still promote argument, for we lack any universally accepted, defining features of language, ones that would allow us to identify it unequivocally ours from other species and contention over the crucial attributes of language are responsible for the stridency of the debate over whether nonhuman animals can learn language. Aping Language is a critical assessment of each of the recent experiments designed to impact a language, either natural or invented, to an ape. The performance of the animals in these experiments is compared with the course of semantic and syntactic development in children, both speaking and signing. The book goes on to examine what is known about the neurological, cognitive, and specifically linguistic attributes of our species that subserve language, and it discusses how they might have come into existence. Finally, the communication of nonhuman primates in nature is assayed to consider whether or not it was reasonable to assume, as the experimenters in these projects did, that apes possess an ability to acquire language.

Looks at how humans have evolved complex behaviours such as language and culture.