Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can (Herbert S. Terrace)

A corrective to the mushy thinking often offered about animal capabilities.

The written version of this article can be found here: https://theworthyhouse.com/2022/07/11/the-children-of-men-p-d-james/

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"When I was growing up in the 1980s, a staple belief of socially-correct thinking was that many non-human animals, not only apes but also dolphins, whales, and elephants, had, if we could only understand, minds functionally indistinguishable from ours. Children were told constantly about Koko the gorilla, who could supposedly speak, albeit in sign language. But all this was false, part of the Left project to convince us mankind is nothing special. Herbert Terrace, who has devoted his entire career to ape cognition, here puts the spike into the lies of my childhood, demonstrating that no ape (or any animal, primate or otherwise) can communicate in any way similar to humans." . . .