Could this be related to their lack of an opposing thumb?
Too many accidents. When I’m going over gun safety with someone for the first time, I tend to point out that it’s all common sense but that the stakes are too high to pick it up via trial and error. In the case of a chimp, there’s no way to preemptively say, “No, pointing the barrel at your face is bad.”
They have an opposable thumb; what they lack is a human’s “precision grip,” that is, the ability to bring the index finger and thumb together in such a way to dexterously manipulate things.
I was thinking about using rubber bullets to let them learn safety rules, ahem, firsthand.
What **Colibri **said. My WAG would be rather that it stems from differences in motor cortex. And possibly, to some degree, in skeletal muscles.
Now, when it come to acrobatics, then monkeys sure has it in spades. On second thought, maybe instead of firearms we should equip them with swords.
Teach them to play paintball. I’d watch that.
I bet the R&D boys at Trunk Monkey are working on it.
Sure there is: You start them with prop or toy guns which can’t project anything dangerous out of them, but which still have the same appearance and weight as real ones. When the chimp points the toy gun at his head, you negatively reinforce him, and when he points it at a legitimate target, you positively reinforce him. Once he’s got that down, you switch to something that projects something harmless (a low-velocity paintball marker, say), and then to something which is still harmless but produces a loud bang to make sure that doesn’t panic them. Only after Mr. Panzee has demonstrated consistent safe practice with the deweaponized guns do you give him the real deal.
What I’m wondering is if the ape or monkey would be able to understand that he can kill things with it.
And if he did understand this, would he kill for fun or sport?
I got 5 bucks on yes
Most apes ought to be able to physically load, disassemble, point, and shoot a gun. Convincing them to do it rather than just chuck the whole gun across the room or randmly pulling the trigger just to make a “BANG” and scare all the other apes would be another story. While they don’t have the dexterity to do caligraphy, they could certainly accomplish the relatively simple motions involved in firearm use. Chimps “thread” long stems of grass in and out of termite burrows all the time, slipping a bullet into a barrel or chamber would be pretty easy. They’d probably be clumsy at it and drop a lot of ammunition, but they’d get through it. Apes can disassemble pretty much anything with moving parts, clumsily, again. Given the right motivation they could eventually reassemble the gun too. A gorilla can even take pictures with an SLR camera (you may remember this National Geographic magazine cover). Pointing/aiming would be the easiest part; there’s no reason an ape couldn’t point a gun at a target and hold it on site.
It’s quite impractical, but physically an ape should be capable of using a gun.
And what would we need a primate or monkey army for, again? Are recruitment figures that bad?
The anatomy of an ape’s hand is similar, but also different to ours.
http://www.sciencephotogallery.com/pictures_1064939/human-and-bonobo-ape-hands.html
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/zo150/mozley/fall/hands.jpg
You might want to redesign the grip and trigger mechanism to accomodate their longer palms and shorter thumbs.
It should be noted that there is debate about whether those animals have, in fact, learned sign language to any meaningful extent or if they just mimic some hand gestures they’ve been taught with the trainers filling in the rest of the meanings themselves much like what happened with Clever Hans.
Rubber bullets at point-blank range are no joke.
As far as teaching chimps to shoot firearms, why go to the trouble? It’s not like we’re lacking in humans ready, willing and able to shoot other humans.
Besides, I don’t want my descendants hunted by apes with rifles on horseback.
Just don’t cheat at cards with your armed monkey.
Dammit! I blew the whole afternoon watching Eddie Izzard videos on YouTube.
They might learn how to fire an ape-k 47!
Hmmm … I wonder if this explains where the Empire gets all those stormtroopers.
My work here is finished 