The Song of the Ape: Understanding the Languages of Chimpanzees

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Twenty years before her birth, scientists began a quest to discover the ability of apes to learn and understand human language. It was a quest that spanned a century and continues today, without success. It was a quest that attempted to transform the wild chimpanzee into a cultured, language-using human.

It was a quest that existed in vain while, all along, in the forests of Africa, something far more amazing existed: William Furness addressed the crowd gathered at the American Philosophical Society.

Indeed, it must not have been the talk he had wanted to give. I can imagine the dour faces of his academic peers as he lectured. I can also imagine their skeptical looks centered on the subject matter of what the psychologist was saying. Furness was speaking about his attempts to teach two orangutans and two chimpanzees to speak. Despite trying to focus on the successes of various cognitive tasks the apes were able to do, he must have known that he would eventually have to admit that the last six years, and the swan song of his scientific career, was a complete and utter failure.

The notion that apes had the capacity for language had led Dr. Furness to travel to south Borneo and capture two wild orangutan infants. Later he purchased two juvenile chimpanzees from an exotic animal dealer in Liverpool, England. He did so believing that he would be able to phonetically train these apes to speak. He reasoned that since cognitive tests had shown these apes to be capable of extremely complex actions, language must be within their reach. Once he taught these animals how to speak, he surmised, he would be the first scientist to finally bridge the gap between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.

Visions of interviewing the apes for scientific publication drove his daily training sessions.

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Unfortunately, it had not worked out the way he had expected. In six months of daily sessions with one of the orangutans he had his greatest success. When hearing the word, she would cling to him and repeat it. In relating these results to his audience, he attempted to focus on the positive. What of the chimpanzees? After five years of training, she was able to say one word, though poorly.

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Finally, he admitted that his language experiment had been a failure. He ended by quoting an English clergyman who claimed to sleep well knowing that man held dominion over the animals through language. His name was Robert Yerkes. Perhaps, he thought, Furness had just used the wrong training methods. What was escaping both Dr. Yerkes was that, at that very moment, the sounds of chimpanzees communicating were echoing though the forests of Africa.

Twenty years later, a chimpanzee would be born in these forests which would bring this communication to the human ear. The sound alerted all of the chimpanzees in the group to the nest where the young mother had just given birth. As births are always a cause for excitement in a chimpanzee group, everyone awoke to see the new infant.

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Together they climbed the large tree where the mother had made a nest of branches and twigs. Upon arrival, they found the mother cleaning her female offspring by the light of the moon. Some clung to the trunk and branches of the tree while others surrounded the bottom. Some were able to fit in the nest with the new mother and infant. Those in the nest gave hoots to the chimps in the branches.

The chimps in the branches gave calls which the chimps at the bottom of the tree responded to with other calls. From a distance, another chimpanzee call was heard. This one started with low hoots and erupted into a loud scream. Immediately recognizing the call, the chimpanzees on the ground moved away from the tree. Running toward the tree was the leader of the group, the alpha male. At full speed the male raced up the tree, knocking over any chimpanzee in his way. When he reached the nest, the alpha male sat beside the new mother and gave a loud call into the air.

The surrounding chimpanzees reclaimed their spots. She was very busy cleaning her new infant. Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds: Passerines 2-Volume Set 2.

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The Song of the Ape: Understanding the Language of Chimpanzees

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