I'm generally against forcing animals, using punishment, to learn to perform stupid tricks for our amusement, but I think this complex set of executions demonstrates a heretofore unrecognized level of primate intelligence.
I realize this sort of thing is illegal, unethical, immoral and violates every self-imposed code we humans have for our conduct toward other living things, BUT, wouldn't it be cool if we could engineer at conception a human Broca's Area(speech center) in the Bonobo brain along with the concomitant vocal chord genes necessary for speech? The FOXP2 gene is really the only genetic difference in brain speech development between Bonobo's and humans. Then we could really asses the intelligence of these creatures.
The fact that it can be done means that somebody somewhere WILL do it, and I for one, can't wait to see the results.
2 comments:
The FOXP2 gene is really the only genetic difference in brain speech development between Bonobo's and humans.
Isn't that an unsupportable leap over a chasm of uknowns, Ed?
Actually no. The FOXP2 gene codes for something like 170 different developmental proteins, only two of which differ between humans and Bonobo's. Of course, these two play critical pre-natal roles, which is why the engineering would have to be done at or before conception.
And that doesn't take into account the vocal chord differences between the two species. We'd have to fix that too.
A leap over a chasm? Yes. But of unknowns? I think they are known, it's jut a matter of some clever genetic engineer mustering the desire and will to execute it.....and avoid the law as he does it....heh heh.
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