Multilingual Monkeys

[Half-n-Half]

Here's a video clip about multilingual monkeys. Apparently separate species of monkeys work together and learn each others' different calls for different things. Very interesting, and it even mentions they have a simple form of grammar.



Maybe some day we can hold conversations with monkeys

What are your guys' thoughts? Cool? Dumb? Don't care?

 

[Elizabeth]

Here's a video clip about multilingual monkeys. Apparently separate species of monkeys work together and learn each others' different calls for different things. Very interesting, and it even mentions they have a simple form of grammar.

Maybe some day we can hold conversations with monkeys
What are your guys' thoughts? Cool? Dumb? Don't care?

Very, very cool !!!

Will actually take a look at work on a reasonably fast machine.
i've heard that some species of birds can quickly learn/reproduce counterfeit alarm calls of other species as they wander through the forest to ward off intraspecies competition or defend territories etc, but they don't actually work in concert to achieve this of course.

So interspecies communication in some form appears quite common.

Just one more of nature's ingenious miracles....

 

[bakaKanadajin]

That was really interesting. LOL @ 5:32, that monkey was like "what, there's no snake here.."

I don't think it's such a far stretch of the imagination for intelligent primates like monkeys to be able to recognize the fact that others' calls for snakes mean 'snake'. So I mean, in my mind it's not as if they're truly speaking each others languages, they've just figured out that when that particular monkey makes that particular sound that means snake. I feel that's more of an intelligent awareness of one's surroundings rather than actually 'speaking another language'.

Speaking another language would be like, that monkey mimicking correctly and then using a call that wasn't of its own species to communicate with that other species of monkeys, which they didn't do. In the video it was more like a pack of monkeys, moving a long together, living in a co-habitation situation.

What I really found interesting was the possible presence of grammar and lying in monkeys. Although Chimps may not use grammar they are able to lie and are tool users. This all points to a brain which is not stuck in the 'here and now', not fixed in perpetual 'in-front-of-my-face'-ness, which most animals are thought to experience. It shows the ability to look at an object and think of it as something different from it's immediate state, (tool use), or to intentionally cause a situation which doesn't exist yet (lying to get food).

 

[Jericho Desu]

I just wanted to say great find! I knew monkeys were clever, but this blew my mind alittle, it seems it really is true that many things we've done has been done before in one way or another by animals/insects etc.

Incredible

 

[Tsuyoiko]

Rooks understand Archimedes' Principle:

BBC News - Clever rooks repeat ancient fable