Talking to the Animals

Strangely, language has always fascinated me.  It began when I was sixteen when I discovered I was speaking in sentences and realized I didn’t know what a sentence was.  Perhaps that was why I was never a successful student. I was convinced High School English classes were a foreign language and pretty useless as I was sure I would never go to England. 

Language is still a mystery; it is the beginning and the end of our world.  What we know of the world we only know as language.  Did that thought ever cross your mind?  It’s really scary when you think about it; only humans have language.  A well known philosopher said that if a Lion could talk we would not be able to understand it.  I realize that some cat lovers and dog lovers might take issue with the statement but the point he was making was that animals and humans are so physiologically different that our experiences of the world would share little that was common.   Our language has evolved as a result of our experiences of the world as we physically and psychologically evolved.  We might describe a dog as angry (anthropomorphism) but never remorseful.

Someone is bound to interject with: ‘Hey, wait a minute, what about those monkeys that talk with sign language?’  Well, what about them?  The evidence is not convincing.  Well-meaning enthusiasts insist Koko the gorilla knows 2000 words but her adopted mother and teacher Dr. Penny Patterson credits her with 500 words. Of course Dr. Patterson seems to be the only one to interpret Koko’s finger wagging.  On April 27^th, 1998 AOL conducted a Live Internet Chat with Koko the gorilla.  If you would like a giggle, Google it.  Critics suggest that Koko’s so-called language acquisition is a mixture of operant conditioning and a form of digital ventriloquism.  Perhaps that’s a little unkind but there is little hard evidence to support Koko’s glowing reviews. 

On the other hand the journal of Science has reported on the work of Marc D. Hauser, professor of psychology at Harvard and W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.  It seems their research demonstrates that nonhuman primates are unable to grasp a fundamental grammatical component used in all human languages.  Score one point for Noam Chomsky.

Koko has been reared as one would rear a child but now she is more than 30 years old and weighs 300 pounds.  Imagine if she had a vocabulary of say 12000 to 15000 words comparable to that of a high school student.  Would she have rights?   I think we would have to conclude she was an autonomous speaker. If so, would it be morally wrong for her to be locked in a cage?  If she wished her freedom could we deny it on the grounds that she was in some way non-human?  If she brushed up on Australian Values could she gain citizenship?  Would we be obliged to give her the right to vote if she demonstrated a preference for one party over another?  Are some animals more equal than others? 

Launt Thompson
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