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Fact Check: Apes Have Never Asked Questions Despite Scientists Communicating with Them Since '60s?
By Madison Dapcevich,
10 days ago
For more than a century, historical documents show researchers have conducted experiments to determine whether apes are capable of communicating not only with members of their own species, but with their human cousins as well.
In short, whether such claims are true depends largely on how one perceives language, communication, and what constitutes a question. Decades of scientific research shows apes can communicate with other apes and humans, and some interpretations of these interactions appear to confirm their ability to ask questions.
Some documents also indicate that scientists have been communicating with apes since at least the 1930s — not the 1960s as the post above claims.
What Are Apes?
Apes are primates with hair, fingernails, opposable thumbs, and a higher brain-to-body ratio, according to the Center for Great Apes .
There are two categories of apes, "lesser" and "greater," the latter of which includes gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and chimpanzees.
Do Experts Think Apes Ask Questions?
Language and communication are complex concepts, therefore defining what constitutes a question is also difficult. For example, if a dog whines at the door, it could be perceived as either the dog asking or telling its owner to let it outside. The same can be said for a cat pawing at its food bowl when hungry.
The argument that apes have never asked a question "is a classic example of overstatement," said Heidi Lyn , a professor at the University of South Alabama's Comparative Cognition and Communication Lab at the Department of Psychology and Marine Science.
"There is plenty of evidence of apes asking questions, although the structure may not look exactly like humans asking questions," Lyn explained.
Cat Hobaiter , a professor at the University of St Andrews who specializes in ape cognition and communication , said there are "plenty of descriptions across multiple enculturated ape studies that include the apes 'asking questions.'"
Posing questions can take many forms. If a chimpanzee looks its handler in the eyes and points to a banana, it may be interpreted that the ape is asking to have the banana. This, Hobaiter said, shows apes are capable of asking questions.
"If we take at face value that in at least some cases the apes were comfortably using the signs with an understanding of what they meant, then there are plenty of cases of them asking questions," she added.
Mike Beran, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia's Language Research Center, said researchers have indeed documented apes asking questions.
"In the 1970s there were documented utterances from a chimpanzee (using a symbol system) that were defined as being in the form of a question," he said, referring to a 1974 New York Times article describing the phenomenon.
However, this did not confirm that the chimpanzee knew she was asking a question, but that those working with her interpreted it as such.
"Other chimpanzees raised in symbol systems like this one did not always have interrogative symbols, thus making it difficult to ascertain whether they would have asked questions [or] if they were capable," Beran said.
Herbert Terrace , a psychologist known for his work with chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky, argued that perceived communication from apes was prompted by their handlers. In a 2019 Psychology Today blog, he suggested apes anticipate what their handlers or teachers might sign and replicate them to "obtain a reward."
Ongoing research seeks to establish whether ape communication is a statement, question, or simply coincidence.
A History of Ape-Human Communication
Research into great ape communication largely began in the 1930s with a chimpanzee named Gua, who was described in the 1933 book, The Ape and the Child . Gua was raised alongside the child of researchers Luella and Winthrop Kellog and studied for comparisons in cognitive development. Though Gua didn't learn to speak, she could understand about 100 human words.
Washoe , a chimpanzee born in West Africa in 1965, was credited with being the first non-human to acquire a human language, American Sign Language, according to the nonprofit organization, Friends of Washoe.
In 1972, researchers Ann and David Premack published an article in Scientific American describing Sarah , a young chimpanzee who had the "reading and writing vocabulary of about 130 'words.'"
Beginning in the 1970s, Koko the gorilla was also trained to communicate using sign language. Her sign vocabulary ranged from basics, like food and drink, to emotional signs, like sad, love, and sorry. Koko and her compatriot Michael also learned to comprehend more than 2,000 words each, according to The Gorilla Foundation .
Like humans, chimps express multimodal communication , which means they communicate using body language, facial expressions, and gestures – like pointing – alongside vocalizations. Some researchers even hypothesized that ape multimodal communication may have "supported the emergence of language among the ancestors of humans."
A trait that sets humans apart from other mammals is their use of symbolic communication. That is, the use of symbols, such as letters or words, to assign meaning. In captivity , some chimpanzees have shown a comprehension of symbolic communication, and it is thought that some wild populations may also use symbolic-like communication , such as drumming on trees to convey which direction to travel.
Cissewski, Julia, and Lydia V. Luncz. "Symbolic Signal Use in Wild Chimpanzee Gestural Communication?: A Theoretical Framework." Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, Dec. 2021. Frontiers, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718414 .
Gillespie-Lynch, Kristen, et al. "Gestural and Symbolic Development among Apes and Humans: Support for a Multimodal Theory of Language Evolution." Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 5, Oct. 2014, p. 1228. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01228 .
Leavens, David A., and William D. Hopkins. "Intentional Communication by Chimpanzees: A Cross-Sectional Study of the Use of Referential Gestures." Developmental Psychology, vol. 34, no. 5, Sept. 1998, pp. 813–22. PubMed Central, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2080769/ .
Olson, James N., and Linda M. Montgomery. "Finding Sarah: 49-Year Reunion with the Chimpanzee of David Premack's Language Studies." Review of General Psychology, vol. 21, no. 2, June 2017, pp. 170–77. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000108 .
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Premack, Ann James, and David Premack. "Teaching Language to an Ape." Scientific American, vol. 227, no. 4, 1972, pp. 92–99. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24922894 .
TAGLIALATELA, JARED P., et al. "Multimodal Communication in Chimpanzees." American Journal of Primatology, vol. 77, no. 11, Nov. 2015, pp. 1143–48. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22449 .
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