---------------------------------------------------------- FREE for JOIN Indonesia Daily News Online via EMAIL: go to: http://www.indo-news.com/subscribe.html - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - Please Visit Our Sponsor http://www.indo-news.com/cgi-bin/ads1 ---------------------------------------------------------- also: Editorial: Planet of the apes The Sunday Times [London] July 25 1999 UNITED STATES -front page- Scientists teach chimpanzee to speak English by Jonathan Leake, Science Editor 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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. 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. 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." 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). 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. Until recently it had been thought they would never speak because their voice boxes could not produce the range of sounds used by humans. 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." -------------------------- The Sunday Times [London] July 25 1999 UNITED STATES So pleased to meet you: the talking chimp by Jonathan Leake and Julie Cohen WITH a coy look, she cocks her head and presses a selection of brightly coloured symbols on an electronic keyboard. >From a voice synthesiser attached to the keyboard, her words emerge. "Does the visitor have a surprise?" she asks. Bill Fields, one of her keepers and colleagues, answers. "Yes, it's in the refrigerator. Do you want me to get it?" "Yes," comes the synthesised reply as she presses the relevant keyboard button. Holding a tub of strawberry jelly, Fields bounds down the stairs of his trailer. "Do you know what it is?" he asks. "Jello," comes the synthesised reply. The conversation may seem unremarkable, but it is an example of an astonishing scientific breakthrough. For lounging at the computer keyboard is no ordinary technician, but a 450lb ape named Panbanisha. She is a 14-year-old bonobo, or pigmy chimpanzee, with a vocabulary of 3,000 words. We no longer have to assume she is delighted to welcome visitors to her 55-acre home at Georgia State University campus in Atlanta; she can tell us. Panbanisha is part of a unique experiment designed to see what will happen if an ape is brought up in a similar setting to a human child. How much progress will it make? What can it achieve? She was born in captivity and has lived alongside scientists at the university's language research centre all her life. She had learned to communicate via sign language but, without talking, researchers could not quite tell what was going on in her mind. Was she conscious? Were her signs a reaction to unconscious cues from her keepers, or an attempt to please them? Such questions were thought unanswerable - until a few months ago when she was given a portable electronic keyboard with a voice synthesiser. Each key bears a symbol known as a lexigram, which can represent anything from a simple object such as "drink" to a more abstract concept such as "up" or "down". It means she can produce words by pressing the keys. Within weeks, the researchers found that she wanted to go further than single words and already understood complex sentences - and that she wanted to use them herself. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, the researcher leading the project, never demands that Panbanisha do things. So when a photo is requested as she lounges in the 95-degree heat on the edge of the forest, a delicate negotiation has to take place with The Sunday Times photographer. Panbanisha is initially unenthusiastic. "I'll bring you some juice, with ice," he offers. She is won over and poses elegantly, but not before tapping the keyboard. "Coffee, milk and juice with ice," says the synthesised voice. Panbanisha has had no trouble mastering the keyboard and delights in ordering people around. "Good coffee", says the synthesised voice as she presses the keys. Holding the hot mug she carefully pours it into a glass to cool it, gulps it down and then requests: "More". Panbanisha is one of half a dozen apes involved in the project, living and working with human researchers 24 hours a day. Besides improving her ability on the voice synthesiser, Panbanisha is also learning to write, with large pieces of chalk that she uses to scrawl words on the floor. "She is very proud and practises hard before she shows me, because she is keen to get my approval," said Fields. "The words are difficult to recognise, because she gets so tired with the effort, but it is improving." What Panbanisha has achieved may, however, be dwarfed by Nyota, her one-year-old son. Since his birth, Nyota, who wears nappies while he is being toilet-trained, has learnt to recognise many words. He can point to his favourite food: grapes, M&Ms and strawberries. As he is only a year old, he is yet to form sentences, but Savage-Rumbaugh believes he is making advances in his comprehension at a similar rate to that of a human child. The question the researchers are waiting to find out is how far will he go. "Expectation has a great deal to do with the progress Nyota is making," said Savage-Rumbaugh. "He is more advanced than either Kanzi - the other ape who lives with them - or Panbanisha were at that age. We've seen what the others can achieve and we presume he will." The apes are not forced to learn; the researchers use instruction as part of everyday life. Their skills emerge as they are ready. When they want something, the scientists speak to them, pointing at lexigrams on the board or on the computer keyboard. Duane Rumbaugh, Georgia university's professor of psychology and biology, and Sue's husband, said: "This is exciting research. The animals can understand the spoken word and will respond with appropriate replies. It shows language skills are not confined to humans and implies that, like us, great apes have the power of thought and reasoning." Indeed, the researchers are not surprised at the achievements of Panbanisha and Chantek, a 20-year-old orang-utan (an orang-utan is shown, right) at the nearby Atlanta zoo, who has displayed similar speaking skills with his voice synthesiser. What does surprise them is how long it has taken to find ways of communicating more directly with the animals. Humans have been trying to find ways of communicating with apes for far longer than most people realise. It was in 1661 that Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary about a "baboone" that had been brought to England; he wondered if if could learn to talk. Serious scientific work did not start until the 1920s when Robert Yerkes, a US researcher, tried to teach them speech. He failed, but concluded that they might be able to learn sign language instead. Forty years later the first such efforts produced apparently powerful results. In 1979 Allen and Beatrice Gardner, also working in America, taught a chimpanzee called Washoe to use the sign language widely used by deaf people. She learned more than 100 signs and was able to string them together, albeit in very short sentences. The most impressive result was that, when introduced to other chimps, she taught them sign language too. A variety of similar experiments also achieved impressive results, but then Professor Herbert Terrace, head of Columbia's primate cognition laboratory, counterattacked with a paper showing that many of the animals were responding to unconscious cues from their trainers and there was little evidence of conscious thought. Since then experiments have been designed with more care. One of the most successful is with Koko, a lowland gorilla who has been raised by Francine Patterson in northern California since 1972. Using sign language, she has developed a vocabulary of 1,000 words and is said to understand another thousand. IQ tests adapted from those used for humans give her a score of 75-90, similar to that of a slightly backward child. Marilyn Matevia, assistant director of research at the Gorilla Foundation, set up to conduct the research, said a voice synthesiser was being built specially for Koko. "We did try one out, but she is so strong she broke it." One of the most disturbing questions raised by animals showing they can reason and communicate at a level similar to that of a child is whether it should entitle them to the same rights as humans. It is the kind of question that medical researchers, who use chimps to study such diseases as Aids to cancer, may find difficult to reconcile with their work. Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Monash University, Australia, is, however, convinced that research such as that in Atlanta demands a fundamental change in our attitude to our closest animal relatives. He believes the ability of the great apes to reason and communicate is so clear that they should be afforded many of the same rights as humans. Other philosophers disagree, saying rights should be linked to responsibilities. Dr Michael Reiss, a reader in education and bioethics at Cambridge University, accepted that apes might develop the same language and reasoning skills as children, but it did not justify giving them the same rights: "We protect children because they can grow into adults that have capacities apes will never develop." A sign of how far the debate has moved emerged earlier this year when a bill that would have given human rights to great apes went before New Zealand's parliament. Though it was rejected, others have raised more fundamental questions: if apes can communicate and reason, do they have souls? It all means that visiting the zoo could become a less cosy experience than in the past. As one scientist said: "It's all very well staring into a cage at a lot of dumb animals. But if they start talking back to you, it makes you wonder what gives us the right to put them there." ------------- The Sunday Times [London] July 25 1999 EDITORIAL Planet of the apes Panbanisha and Chantek. Remember the names because you are going to hear a lot more about them - and, quite likely in one form or another, from them. According to scientists in the United States, they are the world's first apes to possess the skill to make polite conversation. That already makes them more advanced than most of western mankind, to whom the word "please" is increasingly unknown. They have also displayed a reticence most of us have forgotten. We humans have long wanted to get in touch with what they were thinking, not the other way round. Having observed us for centuries, they probably had good reason for keeping their intellectual distance. Now their problems, and ours, have started. On their side, they and the other apes who share their communication skills will have to cope with endless questions that will test both their ability and their patience. Wives unable to penetrate their husbands'responses may prefer a talkative ape instead. The apes already have a defence lobby waiting to protect them from exploitation. Scientists working for New Zealand's Great Ape Project consider chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans to be members of "a community of equals" with those other great apes, the human beings. They want a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes to protect our first cousins. The prospect of hiring lawyers to defend one chimp which kills has been raised by scoffers but the scope for the animal liberation campaign is unlimited. Where stand the churches? Do Panbanisha and Chantek have souls and spiritual rights? What line will the taxmen and probate lawyers take as they grow rich or want to know what happened to their money? Children will be the first to embrace the idea of equality. Giving Wookie and Jar-Jar-Binks big parts in Star Wars films seems the most natural thing in the outer world to them. Samuel Pepys was ahead of his time when he wrote in 1661 about a baboon he believed might be taught "to speak or make signs". Three centuries later, his dream has come true. It is another first for science and another breakthrough for the English language. There is no stopping it now. All we have to remember is what happened to the humans in Planet of the Apes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 25 Jul 1999 jam 07:54:23 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
