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- Researchers have for the first time taught apes how to
speak. Two animals, a pygmy chimp and an orang-utan, have been able to
hold conversations with humans.
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- The chimp, called Panbanisha, has a vocabulary of 3,000
words and talks through a computer that produces a synthetic voice as she
presses symbols on a keyboard.
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- She now speaks constantly, constructing sentences ranging
from, "Please can I have an iced coffee" to discussing videos
she has watched with the scientists who look after her at Georgia State
University's language research centre in Atlanta.
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- The 20-year-old orang-utan, called Chantek, is a few
miles away at Atlanta zoo where it, too, is learning to use a voice synthesiser
- a skill it is expected to master quickly, since it already has a 2,000-word
vocabulary in sign language.
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- Among its first spoken words, delivered Stephen Hawking-style,
was the request to keepers: "Please buy me a hamburger." Recently
it saved money paid to it in return for carrying out tasks and building
artefacts, then told scientists in sign language: "I want to buy a
pool," because a heatwave was making life in the cage too uncomfortable.
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- The animals use a specially designed keypad with about
400 keys, each bearing a symbol. Some symbols have simple meanings such
as "apple"; others represent more abstract concepts such as "give
me", "good", "bad" or "help".
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- The animals have to learn all the symbols and then construct
sentences by pressing keys in the right order. The computer speaks the
words and flashes them up on a screen. Recently Panbanisha, 14, has started
writing words on the floor using chalk - apparently learning letters from
the computer screens.
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- Duane Rumbaugh, the university's professor of psychology
and biology, who is director of the centre, said tests suggested the animals
had the language and cognitive skills of a four-year-old child.
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- Panbanisha has gone further than just learning to speak
and read. She is teaching the same skills to her one-year-old son Nyota,
who has developed a vocabulary similar to that of a one-year-old child.
He cannot create sentences yet, but his early start means he may soon outstrip
his mother. Apes could soon be talking to each other and language skills
could be passed from one generation to the next.
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- Panbanisha's mother, Matata, cannot use the keyboard,
so she tells Panbanisha, who then communicates her mother's needs, such
as: "Matata wants a banana."
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- When the apes look reflective, they may be asked what
is wrong. Sometimes they just reply: "I'm thinking about eating something,"
or "I want to go to Campers Cavern" (a location in their 55-acre
site).
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- Now Rumbaugh has been given a US government grant for
a project to see if great apes can be given the power of true speech.
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- Until recently it had been thought they would never speak
because their voice boxes could not produce the range of sounds used by
humans.
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- Then researchers noticed that some animals were successfully
copying human words and phrases. The sounds were distorted, but recognisable.
A spokesman for the centre said: "Over time our opinions of apes could
change and one day we may have to extend them human rights. Who knows,
soon Panbanisha may voice an opinion on that."
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