Describe researchers' attempts to teach human language to African grey parrots, dogs, and chimpanzees. Explain in what ways those animals' communication differs from human language. If you could study animal communication in any type of animal, which would you choose? Explain how your answer relates to what you have learned in this chapter.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Student examples will vary. A sample answer follows. Parrots, dogs, and chimps have all been able to learn to use words as labels, but none of these animals has been able to use language the way that humans use it.
Because many parrots can mimic human speech, Irene Pepperberg tried to teach an African grey parrot named Alex to use spoken language. Alex was able to identify objects, colors, and compositions, and he combined some words. However, Alex's vocabulary was less than 80 words, which means he fell short as compared with human language skills.
A border collie named Chaser could identify more than 1,000 objects. However, she never learned to communicate complex ideas the way humans do.
Scientists have studied chimpanzees named Washoe, Sarah, Kanzi, and others. Probably the most famous was Washoe, who learned 150 to 200 signs from different syntactic classes. Sarah could follow simple written instructions, and Kanzi could understand and communicate using special symbols. Still, none of these approached humans' inventiveness and flexibility with language.
If I could study communication in a type of animal, I would choose ants. Because they live in groups, they must be able to communicate with one another. I would like to find out if they have complex "dances" similar to bees' communication.