Orangutans use sign language

Orangutans in different zoos use intentional gestures with specific meanings, "to initiate an interaction (contact, grooming or play), request objects, share objects, instigate joint movement (co-locomotion), cause a partner to move back, or stop an action."

Okay, so it's a zoo, not the wild, so they might have picked it up from how their human handlers act with them, but nobody intentionally taught it to them, so, Jesus, this is as impressive as knowing that vervets have vocalizations that distinguish having seen an eagle in the sky from a snake in the grass. It would be interesting to compare the gestures with how their handlers act with them.

It immediately makes you think about how human language began, step by step, a few calls, a few signs, a lucky mutation or two, more complex calls, and pretty soon you're planning a hunt or telling someone where the mongongo nuts are ripe.

And if anyone still has doubt, it puts paid to the notion of special creation. We and orangs and vervets came out of the same stock. Darwin wrote that every once in a while he would begin to think there was something special about people's creation, but then he would remember that human cognition evolved, and he would snap out of it.

Copycatting is universal

You know that TV thing, maybe a Nova, where they showed some chimps and some human kids how to manipulate a box in a complicated manner to get a grape or an M&M? And then they took the covers off the sides of the box, so it was obvious that the complications were unnecessary; you could just do one thing, and the grape rolled out. Chimps then went straight for the food in the simplest way, but the human kids kept doing it the complicated way they had been shown how.

The knock on that has been that the studies involved middle-class kids in western culture. This study compared Australian kids with Kalahari Bushmen kids and got the same result.

I think we see a theory of the origin of ritual here. We keep doing things the same way we saw someone do them, even though it should be obvious that our particular process is irrelevant to the outcome. After all, what the kids were doing worked. They got the candy. Why fix it if it's not broken?

And since oral transmission is imperfect, you can see how religious rituals might evolve, or mutate, into elaborate procedures to call on god, though it should be perfectly obvious that prayer doesn't work. A high proportion of people a tornado kills in any trailer park in Mississippi had prayed to god that very day, and the prayer ritual didn't help them a bit. Maybe they got the ritual wrong that day.

Makes you wonder how much of our adult lives is taken up by performing rituals that have nothing to do with the outcomes we're trying to influence. I heard a story not long ago on NPR about a woman who prepared a roast for cooking by cutting off the tip. It turned out her mother had done so because her roasting pan was too short for the size roast she cooked. Maybe our lives consist of cutting off the tip of the roast or manipulating the box. My, what an unpleasant thought this early in the morning. I think I'll go to my happy place.

UPDATE: It was my partner, not NPR, and it was a ham, not a roast, and the oven was too small, not the roasting pan. So much for my memory.

Inter-species love

I found this at Andrew Sullivan's, too. I teared up when the gorilla wouldn't let him go.



This is so much nicer to think about than the budget. It's Monday morning, and I get to go into the agency and discuss the elimination of 141,000 child care slots statewide, and what that means for us.

The first step to a solution is to change the constitution so we can pass a budget with just a majority.

But right now, the solution is to look at this sweet video and forget about the budget for a couple of minutes.

We're all copycats

I wish I could remember the name or source of the TV show I saw about chimps and people. A researcher built a contraption that released a grape, or maybe an M&M, after a series of steps. He taught the procedure to kids and to chimps. Each learned easily. Then he removed the sides of the contraption, so they could see inside and tell that only one of the steps was necessary. Kids kept following the old ritual, but chimps went straight for the food.

A similar study was just done with Australian preschoolers and Kalahari Bushmen, and the kids all followed the steps they were taught, even when they were clearly irrelevant. The researchers' conclusion was that copycat behavior is universal. I suspect it's mirror neurons firing.

This video has been going around. It's a baby watching Beyonce and imitating the dancers. More mirror neurons.