this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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The entire study of great apes and sign language has been based on flawed methodology and subjective and biased interpretation of very small data sets.
Its interesting that apes can recollect abstract symbols. It's even kind of interesting that they can to some extent recollect hand gestures. But it is nothing more than symbolic association at its absolute best. Calling it language is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is taking place. Apes already possess several kinds of 'language' comparable to symbolic association, stuff like emotive language and body language and expressive language. There is no substantive evidence that they are capable of understanding and using an abstract language.
What has largely happened in so called 'studies' on 'sign language' in great apes, has been a lot of animal abuse and fundraising for animal abuse predicated on vague notions of how inspiring the idea of talking apes is. They can't talk. They are nonetheless very interesting creatures and we should be fascinated by them even without them having the ability to speak human language.
The really frustrating part is that they shouldn't have to speak with us for us to feel compassion towards them. The really disgusting part is that wild animals were being abducted from the wild and raised in deplorable conditions while essentially being tormented by disgraced researchers trying to prove that they could talk. They're very well suited to their natural environment (which we are destroying) and are not meant to live lives in concrete cages on the other side of the world being prodded and clicker trained to make vague hand motions. It's just animal cruelty under the guise of scientific research.
This reminds me of an excerpt in David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs", where he quotes a sailor from like, the East India Company or something.
Something along the lines of "Many suspect the monkeys of the island can speak, but wisely choose not to, knowing they would be taught English and put to work."
Tangentially related: the fucked-up experiments they were doing on dolphins, like giving them LSD or keeping one in a flooded, human-style house and trying to teach it English: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong | The Guardian
content warning:
spoiler
it involves a caretaker routinely jerking off the dolphin she lived with, then the project got shut down, and the dolphin was kept in so bad circumstances that it committed suicide after a few weeksNeither are we. It must be the language that makes it bearable.
You misspelled drugs, tv, and orgasms.
Young people that have well less drugs and orgasms, and there's a whole lot more concrete. What does this mean?
You're wrong. I'm a great ape and I can understand abstract language.
You big, hairy ape! Look at you over here, with your big brain and your big ass. So much abstract thinking, and you ain't even got a prehensile tail!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmzUEQxOvA
You might like the novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. I personally prefer to go into books without knowing much about them, so I will put the premise in a spoiler tag:
the premise
It's about a woman who was raised from birth with a chimpanzee as her twin sister, as she tries to figure out why her sister suddenly disappeared from her life when they were young, and where she is now.It has a fairly comic tone, which is very welcome given all the trauma.
Have you ever had a pet that you were close to? I think you're right that it's cruel to study them though.
Ive had many pets. None of them have ever exhibited the ability of abstraction. Thats not an insult to their ability to understand my emotions or whats happening around them, their brains are just literally not designed to engage in the kinds of communication humans are capable of. They could not have the conversation you and I are having right now, they are neurologically not capable of it. Humans are uniquely capable of this.
First of all, isn't science always testing and studying? Why and how can you make that statement so confidently? You don't know this for sure.
Second, couldn't this just be bias on your part? I've had dogs that could speak our language the best they could. Granted, these were very smart dogs, so they might have been outliers. But your dogs could have been dumb as rocks too.
Third, you're like that archaeology meme with the obsidian in the rafters. It might just be you.
Sorry you lost me with the archeology memes, ill take your word for it lol.
I said exhibited, that already implies that I dont know for certain. I am saying that there has never been any evidence provided to me that my pets, or anyone else's pets, have ever communicated using structured abstract language to communicate. I think believing that animals have a secret ability to communicate in non-symbolic ways is basically a conspiracy theory. There is nuance to what we would define as symbolic and what we would define as structured abstract language, but overall I think this holds true even with very generous definitions for those terms.
Communication through posturing, facial expressions, basic vocalizations, pheromones, can all be used to communicate some ideas that are complex in some ways. You can communicate to someone who knows you very well just be showing them a subtle facial expression that they know you well enough to pick up on. We are especially good at communicating emotions this way. I dont think that anyone would argue those modes of communication are as robust as, say, English. How would we have this conversation through purely posturing, facial expressions, vocalizations and pheromones? Can we convey these abstract ideas through those things that are unstructured and based on what is essentially our ability to pattern much external stimuli? Can you present my arguments to your dog? Can you show that your dog can be made to understand the arguments I am making about language?
If you compare a 2 year old and a really smart dog, they're about the same in their reasoning skills. So yeah, I've had arguments with 2 year olds and dogs.
Again, you're saying you personally haven't had those experiences, so you might be an outlier.
Your first statement is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand, so I dont even really know why you said it.
I'm saying I've never even heard of it. I would love to see a qualitative analysis of 'arguments' with dogs. I have never seen any evidence whatsoever that anything even approaching actual language comprehension is happening. Understanding some words and sentences is not the same thing as language comprehension. Do they understand the meaning of the terms? Can they infer new things if terms have been rearranged? Do they understand the structure of language? No. They definitely cannot. They are capable of pattern matching human vocalizations though, especially as they relate to themselves and things in their immediate environment. Thats not the same thing as language. I'm very sorry if you do not understand the nuance between those 2 things, or if you genuinely believe any of your pets could speak English. Theres nothing I or anyone else can say to convince you otherwise if youve already decided that your subjective emotional experience with your animals leads you to believe they have English language speaking skills.
I really hope you're not a working scientist.
Cool. This isnt a response to anything I said, and you have offered nothing to prove your claim that dogs can speak English lmao.
You are the exact kind of person for whom the ape torture experiments were made to begin with. Someone entirely uninterested in what can be observed and proven. Someone with a delusional anthropomorphic view of what animals are. Blind to your own biases and convinced by the subjective emotional experiences you have projected onto your pets.
No, I'm sorry but "believe me its totally true, everyone knows dogs can speak english" is not a legitimate argument nor a response to what I've been saying.