Baboons learn to read

By the end of the training period, which included about 50,000 trials for each animal, all of the baboons had learned to recognize at least 81 words at an accuracy rate of about 75 percent, the researchers report today in the journal Science. One animal learned more than 300 words.

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This is fascinating news in my opinion. The level of intelligence shown here, as well as the ability to learn, is very interesting. Will monkeys be like us in a few million years?

This sort of makes the Infinite Monkey Theorem come off as just another condescending attitude filled with profound human bias.

What a cool story. Thanks for sharing.

Gonna have to invest in monkey stock soon in stead of being a dental floss tycoon...That is astounding how far they have come....I would not want to piss one off though

they can't read. i can show you chinese characters until you turn blue, and eventually you'll recognize a symbol.

but you then can't claim to read chinese.

second, they can't speak or understand english. so how can you tell if they can read.

all they are doing is associating a word for food. you can train a dog to do that, but you can't claim it is reading.

to them house, car, tree, wheel all mean food to them.

to a person that can read, those words refer to a specific object.

Originally posted by randomname
they can't read. i can show you chinese characters until you turn blue, and eventually you'll recognize a symbol.

but you then can't claim to read chinese.

second, they can't speak or understand english. so how can you tell if they can read.

all they are doing is associating a word for food. you can train a dog to do that, but you can't claim it is reading.

to them house, car, tree, wheel all mean food to them.

to a person that can read, those words refer to a specific object.

Ever hear of Koko the gorilla? She was taught to understand English and to speak sign language, and did so rather effectively.
One example was when her pet cat was killed. She expressed grief through sign language. She showed that it was "sad" and "bad". She was not doing it simply for food, but rather communicating legitimately.

By the way, unless you know the definition and proper use of every word in the English language, then by your logic, you don't know how to speak English.

reply to post by trollz


They didn't learn to read, they were able to recognise words known words and spot words that didn't follow the same pattern, but they weren't able to look at a new word and know how to speak it.

From this and other studies we can see that most of the more intelligent animals are able to understand patterns, either in objects or in drawings, and to understand meanings of unseen things like emotions.

Geez next thing you know they will be sitting at a typewriter typing out Shakespeare or running around in people cloths and speaking english and keeping humans as slaves....oh wait that last part is planet of the Apes. I get confused easily.

I was going to write that these baboons were probably from Arizona, and were prepping to take high school bible courses so they could learn that evolution is a farce, but I didn't want to troll your thread.

Really amazing stuff... thank you for sharing it.

Originally posted by ArMaP
reply to post by trollz

 

They didn't learn to read, they were able to recognise words known words and spot words that didn't follow the same pattern, but they weren't able to look at a new word and know how to speak it.

From this and other studies we can see that most of the more intelligent animals are able to understand patterns, either in objects or in drawings, and to understand meanings of unseen things like emotions.

Isn't this the precursor to learning language though? Isn't that how babies learn, by associating words they hear with their meanings? These monkeys obviously don't have the same mental capacity as adult humans, but I think the point is that they have the potential to become human-like given a large enough timeline.

Originally posted by trollz
Isn't this the precursor to learning language though? Isn't that how babies learn, by associating words they hear with their meanings?

Probably, but it isn't reading.

But it shows that they (as many other species) have the capability of understanding the patterns, ideas and the adaptation to learn how to communicate with other species.