Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Thursday, 9 July 2009
"Grammatical" Monkeys
New Scientist piece that may shed some light on how children learn things like formation of past tense in language. Tamarins were played nonsense words with a syllable prefix. This was then switched to become the suffix to the nonsense word. The monkeys looked at the loudspeakers when they heard the suffix version because it violated what they had previously learned. Could language have evolved from a basic memory structure in the brain?
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