# Are gorillas using sign language really communicating with humans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 16, 2016, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029 "2016-07-16T06:04:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Marion\_Wormer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d07c76/32.png) [@Marion\_Wormer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marion_Wormer)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/41 "2016-07-20T01:18:40Z")
The things with dogs, they only want to do what they want to do; they’ve done a good job at a. partnering with humans who like them and b. training people to do what the dog wants. Oh, they can communicate all right, it’s just from them to us. That sit, stay, heel business? They’re throwing us a bone to make us think we’re in charge. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/42 "2016-07-20T03:50:10Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Deep Blue was a “proof of concept” machine, demonstrating that this brute force method would work when applied to nuclear explosions and air foil modeling. I forget off-hand where IBM built their final machine, Los Alamos or Lawrence-Livermore. IBM had a whole “Blue” line of massively parallel systems based on the POWER architecture. I’m pretty sure both labs got one. There was also the DNA-research series known as “Blue Gene”. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/43 "2016-07-20T16:22:11Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Cecil had a sort of throwaway line in that report that I must comment on, where he said “However, all this strikes me as the equivalent of teaching a computer to beat people at chess — a neat trick, but not one that challenges fundamental notions about human vs nonhuman abilities.” > > Oh, Master, how disappointing to read that from your esteemed font of wisdom! > > True, several things can be said in its defense. Since there do exist some philosophers and even cognitive scientists who hold such an opinion, it cannot be said to be “wrong”. But most people who study cognition and machine intelligence would strongly disagree with it, so it’s at least wrong to state it as a point of fact rather than opinion. > > The central issue revolves around just how high you must set the bar on the continuum of intelligence before it’s acceptable to declare it “human-like”. At one point around the late 50s and early 60s many were doubtful that a computer would ever play really good chess, and their reasoning was sound. It was easy to see that a computer could be programmed to follow the rules of chess, and it didn’t seem particularly challenging to evaluate the consequences of each possible move at any given board position. But there’s so much more than that to playing good chess, because the best-seeming move in the current position may turn out to be a terrible move a bit later down the line, and the search tree in doing evaluations for multiple moves grows exponentially to where it very quickly becomes computationally impossible. > > Their conclusion, therefore, was that since it wouldn’t be possible for a computer to “see” more than a few moves ahead, there was no way it could ever play more than a mediocre game of chess. The question of how people do it remains a mystery; it seems that grandmasters have some kind of strategic mental picture of the game, but it’s not one that they can articulate. They can teach an average player to become a much better player, but they can never teach anyone to reach world-class levels. You either have this intangible skill or you don’t. > > Yet this is precisely what the best modern chess programs like Deep Blue have achieved. And they do not – and cannot – do it with brute-force look-aheads. Part of how they do it can be broadly described as a large set of heuristics that are used to trim the search tree and to evaluate positional strengths. In a very narrow sense Cecil is right that such heuristics might be described as “tricks” to optimize the results, but this is a very misleading way of looking at it. In their totality they are more like a model of a chess master’s learnings and indefinable strategic vision of the game. It’s the end result that matters, and if we agreed in advance that such a result represents intelligence – and indeed if some people argued years ago that computers would never be able to do it for just that reason – and if computers then in fact do it, we have to acknowledge that they’ve achieved intelligence at some level. > > There is a tendency among some to view any process that we can understand the inner workings of to be mechanistic and not “true” intelligence no matter how impressive its results, such as the Watson “Jeopardy” champion. But this is just wrong, and it reflects what Marvin Minsky once said was the phenomenon that “when you explain, you explain away”. Someone from decades past would have no doubt at all that Deep Blue was genuinely intelligent, but today, some people reject that view simply because they more or less understand how it works. But the reality is that there is a widely held theory in cognitive science that even human intelligence at its core derives from computational processes, and a whole field in computer science called computational intelligence which seeks to advance machine intelligence through techniques that are sometimes closely analogous to human cognition. Teaching a computer to play and beat a world class human player at Go was much more significant than chess. I agree that the throw away line was kind of strange though. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/44 "2016-07-20T17:59:34Z")
I don’t think dogs have the first clue about language. When they seem to understand a word or phrase they are picking up on a dozen other things we are transmitting, tone, body language, facial clues, whatever. Try repeating a phrase or order it knows well, but do it in a completely different tone, manner, body stance, facial expression, say the words slowly and mournfully while looking up at the ceiling for example. Same words but I don’t think the dog will understand you at all. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/45 "2016-07-20T18:18:56Z")
One of our dogs _despises_ squirrels with all her heart. We are careful not to say the word if she’s around; we call them S.Q.s. A few times we have had visitors say the word, like, “Wow, you guys have a ton of squirrels at your feeder”, and she goes batshit crazy. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/46 "2016-07-20T18:54:04Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I don’t think dogs have the first clue about language. When they seem to understand a word or phrase they are picking up on a dozen other things we are transmitting, tone, body language, facial clues, whatever. Try repeating a phrase or order it knows well, but do it in a completely different tone, manner, body stance, facial expression, say the words slowly and mournfully while looking up at the ceiling for example. Same words but I don’t think the dog will understand you at all. I’ve had adult human roommates like that. They clearly don’t understand human language. Say “these dishes need doing” they clearly aren’t capable of understanding complex human language. Say “wanna go to the bar” they immediately recognize the words but of course I’m sure don’t understand complex human-level language. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/47 "2016-07-20T19:27:33Z")
To get back to the original question - the gorillas may be _communicating_ but it may not be considered _language_ as the term is generally understood. ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/48 "2016-07-20T20:25:05Z")
My dogs (one in particular) communicates with me very clearly, although not with a verbal language. The instant in basic obedience class where she put together the sit behavior with the hand signal and reward, she started sitting to ask for treats. She’s a retired racer, a breed that is never allowed to ask for things, so they usually get adopted never realizing that asking for things is possible. That “light bulb” moment for her was huge. She’s done the same thing many times as if I was a vending machine and her sitting was the same as inserting a coin. (It doesn’t always work, but it amuses me.) One time I’m very sure she was asking me if she could see what I had on my plate. I was taking my empty plate into the kitchen after dinner. She reared up onto her hind legs and very delicately touched the edge of the plate with her nose, and then sat. Then did it again: touching the plate and sitting. I’ve never taught her targetting (the trick of touching things with her nose on command). And on walks, I learned her body language for expressing her desire to go places. Turning her head means “oh, that’s interesting over there”. Turning head and shoulders and pausing means “I want to go over there”. Stopping and turning her entire body facing the opposite direction means “I want to go home NOW!” ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/49 "2016-07-20T20:31:26Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Agreed. Another way of saying this is that animals can learn vocabulary, but only humans as far as we know have the ability to assemble that vocabulary into consistent systematic patterns to convey complex ideas. We can create new sentences that we’ve never seen before to express entirely new ideas. In linguistics this property of language is sometimes called generative grammar and it appears to be uniquely possessed by humans, and some believe that it’s innate to the human brain. In The Alex Studies (or Alex and Me if you want to read the layman’s version), Alex the African grey parrot did create a new word for himself, which astonished the researchers. They had taught him the name for bananas and cherries. When he got tired of those as rewards, they started rewarding him with bits of apple. He liked that and would ask for it using the made up word “Banerry”. The lead researcher Irene Pepperberg guessed that he came up with that because it tasted like banana to him but looked like a giant cherry. But regardless of how he came up with it, he built himself a composite word for something. It’s not building a pattern that forms a complex idea, but prior to this we assumed animals couldn’t coin new words for objects either. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/50 "2016-07-20T21:45:42Z")
I met an Orangutan, one Chantek by name, in the 80s, on a Summer afternoon. Trained at UTC to use sign language. He was highly social. Somebody was “at home” there. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/51 "2016-07-23T02:52:51Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I don’t think dogs have the first clue about language. When they seem to understand a word or phrase they are picking up on a dozen other things we are transmitting, tone, body language, facial clues, whatever. Try repeating a phrase or order it knows well, but do it in a completely different tone, manner, body stance, facial expression, say the words slowly and mournfully while looking up at the ceiling for example. Same words but I don’t think the dog will understand you at all. Absolutely. Try insulting your dog and calling him/her nasty names, but in the “who’s a good doggie” voice. Hysterical. However, I agree that dogs (and cats) sometimes learn individual words. We used to use synonyms for “out” and “walk” when we had dogs. ---
**Author:** ![TheWerewolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TheWerewolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheWerewolf)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/52 "2016-07-23T05:07:52Z")
I don’t think there’s much argument that animals can learn specific words and associate a meaning with them. That’s easily tested and has been shown to be true. The question is ‘can an animal express a complex concept using symbolic representation’… and that’s a lot more complex a question. I think there’s evidence that an animal can do an action as an abstract representation of a state. I think they can even present a series of actions to express a temporal sequence. But do they have the concept of a ‘language’ is the actual question being asked and that is difficult because the term ‘language’ itself is a little vague. If I say ‘give food me’. Is that a sentence? It has all the requisite bits - a verb, a subject and an object - but not all human languages actually work that way. Is ‘food me’ a sentence? Now the obligatory anecdote potion: my father had a startlingly clever cat who responded to her own name (fairly uncommon in cats). My father was fairly deaf and one day I watched her walk over to my father who was sitting on the couch. She sat down in front of him in a position where she could be sure he could see her… and waited until he started to pay attention to her. Then she did the following sequence - she licked her lips and waited for a few seconds to be sure he saw this… then walked to her food dish and licked her lips again… waited again until she was sure he saw this… then walked to where her favourite food was kept (my father tended to leave one can opened with a lid so it’s easy to smell) and she stayed there until he got up and went over and fed her, which he did shortly. To me, that’s a clear set of three ‘sentences’ with temporality. “I’m hungry”, “Feed me” and “I want this”. But it’s not a language in a syntax sense because it’s three actions that abstractly convey a concept. So can animals use abstract symbols to communicate? I think so, given that animals can recognise abstract sound patterns (words) and relate them to concrete things that would almost have to be true - but do they use a formal language with syntax? I suspect not. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/53 "2016-07-23T11:54:28Z")
Yes, i can’t believe anyone seriously questions whether some animals can learn words. Almost all dogs know some important (to them) words, as do some cats, many parrots, and probably other domestic animals I haven’t spent as much time with. Whether animals can learn language sort of depends on what you mean by language. Can a cat express a complex thought in language? I don’t believe my cats are capable of forming complex thoughts, let alone sharing them with me. Can a whale? I have no idea. I do know that lots of things that were believed to be uniquely human have since been found among other animals. Crows will carefully fashion a bent stick to better “fish” for ants. They are making and using tools. I guess one question would be it animals can learn grammar. I’d look at birds, not chimps, for that. But i think it’s an open question. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/54 "2016-07-23T12:55:05Z")
> [@TheWerewolf](#): > > To me, that’s a clear set of three ‘sentences’ with temporality. “I’m hungry”, “Feed me” and “I want this”. But it’s not a language in a syntax sense because it’s three actions that abstractly convey a concept. It is pretty high order intelligence. Having three different ways to convey the concept of hunger, not just simply three different words. If a cat can’t see it’s food slave it might start yowling also to indicate “I’m hungry”, but that doesn’t sound any different from other common cat communications such as “When we take over I’ll kill you first”. Language as we are discussing here is more complex, but then we are more complex animals than cats and dogs. Some of the limitations for them may be what they have to say. Chimps are known to conspire, they may be close to language in communicating more complex information, but syntax and abstraction are still quite limited for them. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Spayed\_PI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Sam\_Spayed\_PI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Spayed_PI)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/55 "2016-07-29T17:52:47Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I don’t think dogs have the first clue about language. When they seem to understand a word or phrase they are picking up on a dozen other things we are transmitting, tone, body language, facial clues, whatever. Try repeating a phrase or order it knows well, but do it in a completely different tone, manner, body stance, facial expression, say the words slowly and mournfully while looking up at the ceiling for example. Same words but I don’t think the dog will understand you at all. This is certainly possible but not necessarily true. When training some dogs the “stay” and “release” commands, I noticed that it really was the tone of the “release” command that the dogs responded to, not the word itself. But with a bit (OK, a lot) more training, they eventually learned not to respond to the tone and just to the word, so they would release on a boring, monotone “OK” but not a sing-song-y “Chrysler” or whatever. For the anecdote: when my sister and I were in high school we had a relatively intelligent dog. One morning we were running late because my sister couldn’t find her keys. The dog started to get really excited, jumping up and spinning in circles. We could not figure out why he was behaving that way; he couldn’t possibly understand what was going on, and even if he did, why would he be excited anyway? We eventually figured it out; while Sister Spayed was muttering/whining/yelling “where are my keys? Help me look for my keys!” the dog was hearing “blah blah blah CHEESE? Blah blah blah blah blah CHEESE!” Cheese, of course, being one of his very favorite foods. Definitely not the tone or the context, he [mis]understood the word itself. That said, I don’t think there’s any question any more that animals can’t understand the meaning of some words or symbols; the question now is whether they can be taught grammar. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2016, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/56 "2016-07-30T01:45:11Z")
> [@Sam\_Spayed\_PI](#): > > This is certainly possible but not necessarily true. When training some dogs the “stay” and “release” commands, I noticed that it really was the tone of the “release” command that the dogs responded to, not the word itself. But with a bit (OK, a lot) more training, they eventually learned not to respond to the tone and just to the word, so they would release on a boring, monotone “OK” but not a sing-song-y “Chrysler” or whatever. I have a second-and-third-hand anecdote for this sort of thing. A friend of mine was telling me about a German Shepherd he met, a former police dog. At the time he met the dog, the owner and handler told him a story about the dog, who used to be used for drug searches, going to the vet. The vet had to give him a shot for something, and when the dog saw the needle he started to growl because on the job he associated needles with drugs. The handler told him ‘It’s a good needle’, and he stopped growling and actually held out his leg to the vet. During my friend’s meeting with the dog, the dog brought out a toy and set it on the floor, then looked pleadingly at the owner to play fetch with him. The owner said no, so the dog looked at my friend. He tried to keep his tone of voice and facial expression as neutral as possible, and said ‘It’s up to you.’ The dog looked at him for a few moments as if evaluating the situation, and then picked up the toy and brought it over to my friend. Obviously a very clever, very well trained dog who was used to analyzing clues in his environment and his interactions with others. ---
**Author:** ![Samarami](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@Samarami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Samarami)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2016, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/57 "2016-07-30T23:20:43Z")
No question in my mind about capabilities of animals (particularly dogs, horses, mules) to respond to commands – generally single syllable words. Last of the official cowboys (I’m 81), I grew up around horses, mules, cows, and working dogs. I have no experience with gorillas. I’m aware of situations where animals – particularly mules – “reason” their way around certain obstacles and dilemma to accomplish tasks. The old “Lassie” films come to mind, for any of you old enough to remember them. I’m a skeptic’s skeptic and a heretic’s heretic – especially concerning dogma from religion, central political “authority”, “science” (quotes intended and necessary) – all conventional wisdom. The arrogance of much “science” will get one laughed out of many rooms (and always routinely lumped with religion) to even pose questions regarding the more sacred of their “theories”. One is not allowed to question their use of terms and phrases such as “developed”, “adapted”, “animal of the biological order including monkeys and humans”, et al. Don’t even think of questioning whether human beings fall under the order of “primates” (they don’t – far as I know, but don’t take my word for it). It would seem reasonable to assume that if the stories from “science” having to do with primates over millions (billions?) of years finally coming out of the woods, standing erect, then using their “highly developed prehensile hands” to make tools, hunt, gather, etc etc etc, have veracity (and eventually led to reason, communication, etc etc) – that the gorillas would have actually out evolved human beings. I mean, they “developed” not only prehensile hands, but prehensile feet. They should have “adapted” and “developed” much more rapidly and moved further down the evolutionary scale much more quickly. But that sort of thinking could threaten my funding. Now to the thread: No, I do not believe gorillas are using sign language to communicate with human beings. But who am I to know??? Sam ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2016, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/58 "2016-07-31T00:47:09Z")
So, if you’re skeptical of all science, and the scientific consensus on some topic is “we don’t know”, what do you think that means? ---
**Author:** ![Samarami](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@Samarami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Samarami)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2016, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/59 "2016-07-31T02:39:46Z")
Didn’t say (or certainly didn’t mean to say, or imply) that I’m skeptical of all science. As retired science teacher I’m never skeptical of valid scientific method, or [steps thereof](http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtml). Admissions of “I don’t know” meet with my admiration. This would especially apply in forensic studies – or evidence of past occurrence. Because all we can do is examine evidence and form conclusions based upon evidence. For the most part we can never “know” for absolute certain past events. Origins are generally always subject to “reasonable doubt” – in both courts and laboratories. As a skeptic I generally lean on the “doubt” end of reason – especially when subject to “scientific dogma”. Have difficulty digesting intellectual blackmail. The question is “are gorillas using sign language…”, and my answer is “no – as far as I know” But the truth is, I really don’t know. I doubt. How’s that for fence sittin’? Sam ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2016, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029/60 "2016-07-31T12:55:24Z")
> [@Samarami](#): > > It would seem reasonable to assume that if the stories from “science” having to do with primates over millions (billions?) of years finally coming out of the woods, standing erect, then using their “highly developed prehensile hands” to make tools, hunt, gather, etc etc etc, have veracity (and eventually led to reason, communication, etc etc) – that the gorillas would have actually out evolved human beings. > > I mean, they “developed” not only prehensile hands, but prehensile feet. They should have “adapted” and “developed” much more rapidly and moved further down the evolutionary scale much more quickly. But that sort of thinking could threaten my funding. Er, they did. In their niche, which is where evolution does its work, where the ‘fit’ in ‘survival of the fittest’ comes in. It’s not a ‘scale’ from ‘less evolved’ to ‘more evolved’ with us at the ‘most evolved’ end to set the standard for advanced development. Gorillas evolved to where they are now starting from as far back as we did (-ish, without consulting a cladogram to see exactly where our ancestors split from the common one). They are as different in their own way from the common ancestor as we are, as you point out, just in different ways that gave them advantages in their niche, and those traits that gave the most advantage in that environment were the ones that proliferated most in the gene pool until they are as we see them today. They perform better in their niche with their developments than we, naked and alone, would do. We perform better in our niches, with our developments, than they do, but we aren’t inherently ‘more evolved’ than they are simply because our development went in a different direction. It’s not a race to a goal that we gained and they failed to, it’s two different journeys. It’s ‘luck of the draw’ that certain differences that developed in us gave us certain advantages, within our environment at the time, that allowed us to eventually reside in a variety of niches in a variety of ways. Those same differences might not have been an advantage in a different environment. The gorilla may have experienced changes along the way that were not advantageous in their environment at the time and so didn’t persist in the gene pool, but which in a different environment may have conferred advantages similar to ours. We can only deal the deck we’re given, and the gorilla’s genetic deck didn’t have the same cards as ours, by pure chance as far as we can tell (specific genetic mutations being a matter of random chance as far as we can tell), or if some cards were similar, they didn’t experience the same selective pressure as we did to make those cards the best options for survival and reproduction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-gorillas-using-sign-language-really-communicating-with-humans/760029.md?page=4)