koko, why i think she cant talk

Ever since last year i have had the contention that
Koko cant truly talk.as a student of anthropology.
Anthropology is what i am.i love it, paleois the major i am after but
all branches are fascinating.
ok where do we start?
i need to create a framework of reasoning for you to
be able to percieve what the problem is with saying
she can talk.i hope you enjoy this..it will hopefully
show you what i am all about.

The first thing to clear up, i think is to explain
that we are not directly related to great apes..which
include chimps and gorillas.they are included in
homonid, but the chimpanzees for instance are in
pongid and are called pongid troglodyte.as a side note
there is a tendancy to want to include chimps in homo
but as i shall demonstrate it is somewhat for an
obscure reason.
the genetic structure of a chimp is one such that
only includes the same ingredients, but is wrapped up
completely different.within this genetic makeup,
chormosome number 12 and 13 look remarkably like human
chromosome 2 chopped in half.becuase of this, many
scientists are pushing to include chimpanzees in homo
and want it to be referred as homo troglodyte
...haha.sounds funny doesnt it?
anyways..it is inconclusive and represents a strange
tendancy to either accept that we are animals or that
we are not.(keep this in mind ok?)
now the reason why i actually stress this fact is
becuase it merely demonstrates that we have
simularities...there are two kinds though that we take
into account.one is derived from a common ancestor and
the other is seperately evolved.sometimes even to
completely different lifeforms can evolve simular
traits but have absolutely no really relevant
connection, for instance a bird and a butterfly both
have wings.
ok..i hope you are following this becuase it is
important to keep this in mind.
our one true connection to the great apes versus all
the other primates is the fact that we have a large
body size.
monkeys,and even gibbons dont..gorillas and chimps
do.
that belive it or not is the thing that sperates them
from the rest and brings them closer.
now i know that sounds simple and probably lame..but
please try to follow this..we , as a species have the
unique characteristic of bipedialism.no other primate
has that.As a rule to find any common ancestor that
may be ours within a potential fossil site the
depiction of a skeleton capable of bipedialism is the
one true indicator of it being one of us.
now, among that and a dental formula (2123)- which
represents 2 insicors, 1 canine, 2premolars and 3
molars..one quarter of the tooth array of
humans..and..the fact that the canine is truly reduced
in size and we have a generalized dentition(indicative
of a wide diet).we have the laraynx lower then any
primate.
there is no reason for it to be lower except to
audibly speak.that is the only real practical reason.
so..first thing i should point out is...chimps and
gorillas have no physical representation that even
remotely demonstrates a tendancy to communicate...in
other words..where they split off in the fossil record
was before any real advancement to that way of being
was incorporated.
We do however share a few things that may play into
the idea that has led some people to think she (koko)
truly communicates.for one they have steroscopic
vision and the visual nerve endings do connect to
opposite sides of the brain, like ours.they also are
day creatures which means they have color vision.
very important tools for a foraging animal.another
common trait that depicts a common ancestory is the
ability to brachiate or swing in trees.gorillas dont
do it anymore, but they still have the skeleton make
up that has for instance a wide range of movement
possible with the arms.see, unlike a dog or cat for
instance that is quadraped, and their degree of limb
movement is somewhat resticted, we and the apes can
rotate our arms around in circular fashion.this is a
result of being in the trees at one point.but not
nescessarily the only reason, for there are leapers
such as a 'flying squirell' who leap from one vertical
surface to another.yet for the topic of discussion it
is safe to say that is a shared trait, the mobility.
now, off hand i want to point out something that is
nescesary for contemplation, the great apes (chimps
and gorillas) are knuckle walkers...this is
important, it is a form of locomotion that is suited
strictly for the express ability to dash up trees and
not really suited for land or terrestial long distance
travelling.i hope that this distinction will become
clear when i explain the fact that we walk bipedial as
a effecient means of terrestial walking.
this is by far a major achievment for us.it enabled
us to cover much territory in our foraging efforts for
food.the reason this was even nescessary was becuase
during the time the potential common ancestor (say
egyptopithecus..a quadrapedial tree dweller that
foraged the ground but remained primarliy in the trees
) split up and became two seperate hybrids, one was
called proconsul ;the weather was erratic.it was right
after the last vestiges of the ice age had lessened
and the climate was like fluctuating between
incredibly hot and arid to starkly cold..the fruit
(soft fruits like apples for eg) would die off..or not
reproduce in the needed abundunce, this is what
brought us down from the trees..as we began to stay on
the floor of the forest and increase our range in the
foraging for alternatively hard fruits(seeds) we
changed our dental pattern and type to suit the
task.hard molars were need to to grind the sustenance.
the rarity of these food sources cause us to
eventually evolve into bipedial from need to travel
farther.it was here that we most likely
seperated.becuase as this was happening our brains got
larger.many thoeries exist as to why exactly that
happened but i agree with the one that dealt with the
need to map out the enviroment versus random chance.
as our brains got larger a whole need for our neural
network and the way we thought had to change in order
to assimulate the information.
this is where the matter of koko comes into play,we
needed to constantly change our culture to survive.it
was our one true strength that enabled us to
survive.as we evolved due to biological recognition of
a mate and biocultural evolution ( a method that
declares that we change according to the culture we
are in biologically and possibly vice versa.).an
example of this is the way caffienne is used in north
america has the culture abusing caffeinne which means
that the majority of people suffer from sleep
deprivation.the blame for this rests solely on the
culture's tendancy to demand so much work time.
so here we have this 'new kid on the block' that has
a need to create a culture and is wholey dependant on
it.this is a strange thing to relize isnt it?..we are
literally hopeless without culture as a species, yet
it is not a genetic triat.it is a learned behavior.
so theres is another point, the trait of culture is
strictly human, no animal has it like us.
i swear to you, no great ape has a culture...they
just got instinctual urge.
so added on to no physical identification there is no
cultural reason.
think of it like this, there is no culture in apes
becuase there is no way to spread it through
communication.
one thing that is needed to say however is that apes
and chimps may indeed have recognition of self.plus
they have a good symbolic recognition.however this is
by no way a means for communication.It can be for
instance recognition of a predator, or posionous
fruit. but communication has much more depth.
now as i have stated, the seperation involved us
getting more complex nuearal connections in our
brains, and of course more area space in the brain
from the grooves, that have more nerve connections.
the reason is simple, our culture was and need to
communicate required more thought.
we had a need for instance to pass on the ability to
make tools from stone.
ok, so what is the deal with koko?
it is not a pavlov response.i suggested that it
was instead her supplement of the need to forage.for
instance if i walked 8 miles to get food and one day a
person says here take this bike, i would becuase my
foraging strategy would improve .so in effect koko has
no need to forage, she is fed through us and therefore
the foraging strategy is fullfilled.
another thing to remark on is the fact that if she had
a baby, she wouldnt teach it sign to communicate but
to teach her young to forage as it were.
a simpler way to understand the difference between her
and us is this.if i was on the bus and saw a
completely different individual and we have nothing in
common and nothing that either wants from each other,
and started talking with him about the middle east
crisis and have no real motive except to pass the time
versus a gorilla that has been taught to expect a
response when she signs things out.
see..koko expects something.always, i dont imagine she
can have a random conversation.also i want to point
something else out, if for eg i was there, i dont know
sign.koko wouldnt change her strategy to communicate
to me, like we would, like my grandmother taught the blind
braille..it was an alternattive to reading .the need
or desire to communicate is superficial , see..she
wouldnt change her method like we do.

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