Nature & Nurture: Beauty and Strength

 My mother often asks me: "Has Bow said anything clever lately?" She is used to the frequent anecdotes from an earlier era, when Bow had just had his breakthrough, and there were daily stories of something new and unexpected that he had said.

As Bow arrived in his late teens, stories like that became few and far between, and now that Bow is in his twenties, he has become quite laconic. But today was an exception.

At lunch, a Jordan Peterson conversation with Frans de Waal popped up on my feed. I guess YouTube knew I would be interested. They were discussing the nature/nurture contribution to gender differences as well as what it takes to socialize males to show deference to females.

Bow, sated from his main course, made occasional grumbling agreement sounds to concur with what Peterson and de Waal were saying. From his own experience, he knew girls are less into rough and tumble play than boys are. After all, he'd had to go easy on his older sister, Sword, to get her to play with him at all. 

The discussion between Peterson and de Waal, which centered on the statistical backdrop to gender stereotypes, reminded me of the playful interactions between Sword and Bow depicted in the video clip embedded above. Bow, too, enjoyed the nostalgic view of days gone by. He watched the clip twice. Then he took my hand and spelled: 

"חרב יפה. זה טוב. רק קשת חזק."

"Sword is beautiful. That is good. Only Bow is strong."

So now I have another anecdote to share with my mother when we talk on the phone tomorrow.

Low Tech Communication Aids

 

The latest development on my YouTube channel is Memberships. In order to support my research, you can join the channel as a Donor, a Patron or a Benefactor. Here is a link:

https://www.youtube.com/c/AyaKatz/membership

Among the perks available to members are previews of videos about Bow's writing, literacy and other intellectual pursuits at a time when these are not yet available to the general public. Since revenue from viral videos comes primarily from people who are not subscribed to my channel and could not care less about ape language research, this seems like a fair allocation of our resources. The general public gets to view grooming videos right away, but more recent advances in ape language studies are shared first and foremost with our Donors, Patrons and Benefactors.

Since the inception of  Project Bow, I have found that low tech methods work better and are more cost effective when working with a strong but intellectual chimpanzee such as Bow. A talking machine was quickly replaced by laminated menus, self-flushing toilet by a plastic potty chair and a touch screen computer by an old fashioned notebook and pen.

The problem that the touch screen computer was meant to solve was Bow's reliance on caretakers' hands to point at letters on the glass. This is a problem of proof, not of communication. It looks to outsiders as if Bow is being manipulated by his interlocutors to point at the letters.  But it certainly does not look to us that way, and it does not explain why Bow can tell us things we did not know and share information available only to him. So it was suggested that the intercession of a non-manipulable computer could solve this PR problem for us.

In order to motivate Bow to use a computer to communicate, certain ape language researchers suggested pairing the touch screen computer with a food dispenser, so that Bow would essentially be typing for a food reward. "Machines can't be manipulated, so he would have to say what the machine wanted him to say," I was told.

I don't want Bow to  have to say anything. I want him to be able to say what he wants to say.  Here is an example of something ordinary, but totally unexpected, that Bow recently said to his caretaker while I was away: "Go sit outside." She was confused, "You want me to sit outside? How do you mean, like on the porch?" He answered: "Yes."

There is nothing extraordinary about this exchange, but it could not have happened with a touch screen computer tied to a food dispenser. Bow could not tell the dispenser anything. He would be totally subject to its mechanical limitations.

Recently, Bow and I watched a video of an Israeli young man who lost his voice while serving in the army. Bow identified with the voiceless man. He watched as the young man talked to a reporter by writing in an ordinary old fashioned notebook by putting pen to paper. "You could do that, too," I told Bow. "You could talk to people by writing in a notebook."

Bow was moved to try. His attempt looks like letters, though hard to tell what he wanted to say.  You can contrast his attempt to write letters  with his drawing on  this other page in the same notebook, in which a  month earlier he had tried to draw a face. (The face Bow drew is only in black ink. The other bigger face in blue was one I tried to draw.)

If you want to see the videos of Bow writing and drawing, you can join as a member of my channel. Eventually, these videos will all be released to the public, but you will see them in advance, and you can know that you helped finance my research.

Thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMFOFKeAjwLWAlNrCvQVxvQ

Because It's Not Good

Bow sometimes has an oblique way of referencing things, as if they almost have nothing to do with him and he is remarking on them in passing.

I was away for three days to give a talk before the Laffite Society in Galveston. Before I left Bow spelled "שמעתי שאת עוזבת". "I heard that you are leaving."

"Bow, I told you I was leaving."

He agreed,  : "כן" "Yes."

I had explained it all to him before, where and why I was going and that Lawrence would be taking care of him in my absence. He had not said anything at all about it until the afternoon of the day I left.

I returned last night. This morning, I was looking at pictures from the trip that I had posted on Facebook. This seemed to upset Bow, though he did not say anything about it. So I offered to let him look at the pictures and explained what was in each one. "This big house is the hotel where I stayed. These are some of my friends, here is a picture of me talking to people about my book."

Bow was much more interested in the picture of the people in the restaurant than in anything else. He looked at that particular picture for a long time, staring at it closely.

Later, he tried to scroll through the pictures, but  at first he was doing it wrong.

In no time at all, however, he became an accomplished scroller, at which point he wanted to practice his new found skill over and over again.

After he was done looking at the pictures he took me to the glass and spelled: "תנסי לא לנסוע" Roughly translated that means "Try not to travel."

"Why?" I asked him.

He answered: "כי זה רע"  "Because it's bad."

He did not at any time refer to his own feelings on the matter. It was just a general statement disapproving of travel.