The child stars of these videos included a chimpanzee named Panpanzee, a bonobo called Panbanisha and a human girl, identified as GN. To pick up on these behaviors, the team studied hree babies of differing species through videos taken over a number of months. Such gestures, which seemed to be innate in all three species, precede and eventually lead to the development of language in humans, the researchers say. They also raise their arms up, a motion indicating that they want to be picked up, in the same manner. Members of all three species reach with their arms and hands for objects or people, and point with their fingers or heads. Using video analysis, a team of UCLA researchers found that human, chimpanzee and bonobo babies make similar gestures when interacting with caregivers. Nonetheless, certain basic things-such as the urge to cry out in pain, an increase in blood pressure when feeling anger, even shrugging when we don’t understand something-cross cultures.Ī new study, published today in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, compares such involuntary responses, but with an added twist: Some observable behaviors aren’t only universal to the human species, but to our closest relatives too-chimpanzees and bonobos. This hypothesis didn’t quite pan out-last year, researchers poked a hole in the idea by showing that the expression of emotions such as anger, happiness and fear wasn’t universal (PDF). In the 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, the naturalist argued that people from different cultures exhibit any given emotion through the same facial expression. "In short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study," the authors write.Thirteen years after the release of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin published another report on the evolution of mankind. Finally, one other possibility comes to mind, the authors point out: While Gua showed no signs of learning human languages, her brother Donald had begun imitating Gua's chimp noises. Or perhaps it was the fact that Gua was becoming stronger and less manageable, and that the Kelloggs feared she might harm her human brother. It could be that the Kelloggs were simply exhausted from nine months of nonstop parenting and scientific work. But as for why, the Kelloggs, who are so specific on so many other points, leave the reader wondering. We are told only that the study was terminated on March 28, 1932, when Gua was returned to the Orange Park primate colony through a gradual rehabilitating process. Our final concern is why the project ended when it did. As the Psychological Record authors describe: The experiment, however, ended rather abruptly and mysteriously.
As such, the Psychological Record authors write, the Kelloggs' experiment "probably succeeded better than any study before its time in demonstrating the limitations heredity placed on an organism regardless of environmental opportunities as well as the developmental gains that could be made in enriched environments."
Human vs chimpanzee hand manual#
They raised the two babies in exactly the same way, in addition to conducting an exhaustive list of scientific experiments that included subjects such as "blood pressure, memory, body size, scribbling, reflexes, depth perception, vocalization, locomotion, reactions to tickling, strength, manual dexterity, problem solving, fears, equilibrium, play behavior, climbing, obedience, grasping, language comprehension, attention span and others," the Psychological Record authors note.įor a while, Gua actually excelled at these tests compared to Donald.īut eventually, as NPR notes, Gua hit a cognitive wall: No amount of training or nurturing could overcome the fact that, genetically, she was a chimpanzee. Abandoning a human child in the wilderness would be ethically reprehensible, Kellogg knew, so he opted to experiment on the reverse scenario-bringing an infant animal into civilization.įor the next nine months, for 12 hours a day and seven days a week, Kellogg and his wife conducted tireless tests on Donald and Gua. Since his student days, Kellogg had dreamed of conducting such an experiment. He was fascinated by wild children, or those raised with no human contact, often in nature. Could a chimp grow up to behave like a human? Or even think it was a human?
As later described in the Psychological Record, the idea was to see how environment influenced development.
The couple planned to raise the chimp, Gua, alongside their own baby boy, Donald. On June 26, 1931, comparative psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife welcomed a new arrival home: not a human infant, but a baby chimpanzee.
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