Bow has Personality!

Yesterday was Halloween. Bow and I celebrated in our own way. You can watch our Halloween special right here.

Watching this video, you might be asking yourself: is this really a chimpanzee who can spell out words? Is he really sixteen going on seventeen? Is he really an intelligent being? There are those who when they see too much playfulness or behavior that in a human we might associate with a lower IQ become even more skeptical about my claims about Bow's literacy.

However, language ability does not necessarily imply overall high IQ in humans. Literacy can also exist in the form of hyperlexia, implying excellence in decoding letters into sounds and patterns into words, without a high level of comprehension. Many humans I know who are perfectly normal use their language skills just to express their feelings or interact socially with others, without ever having to encode new information. They keep talking and talking, but all they are really communicating with all that hot air is how they feel at the moment or how they want to relate to another person. They can go their whole lives without expressing an original thought or comprehending an original thought expressed by someone else. That is all normal behavior for humans, and chimpanzees like Bow are not all that different.

Recently I was sick and was away from Bow for two days. He was in good hands, and people were taking care of him in my absence. When I got back, he was very gentle with me, grooming. He did not say anything at all about my illness. But one time, totally spontaneously, after a couple of days of my being back, he took my hand and spelled:  שתי דודות שמרו עלי      "Two ladies watched over me."

I think he just wanted me to know he had been well taken care of in my absence. There is nothing super deep about that, but it did touch my heart.

This morning, I noticed Bow had not yet used the potty. So I asked him if he needed to pee.

                                                                                                       ?אתה צריך לעשות פיפי

His answer tickled me: רק קצת  "Just a little."

This is not a deep interspecies communication moment. But that is how Bow uses language to express his personality.  He is not a needy person. He only needs to pee "just a little."