Talking Monkeys
Talking Monkeys
Out of context: Reply #7
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- phatlee0
The limit is not intellectual, but physical. Because they don't have the same kind of voice box, monkeys just can't make the same kinds of sounds that humans can. Many birds, on the other hand, are able to make a wide variety of sounds; in nature, they somtimes use this ability to mimic the calls of other birds.
Interestingly, there has been some success teaching apes sign language. (The most famous case is Koko the gorilla http://www.koko.org/index.php.) Intellectually, apes appear to be much more capable with language than birds, which generally can only learn to repeat particular phrases, as compared to composing new sentences.