Your video, Richard Dawkins: Why are there still chimpanzees?, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

to his last comment, i don't think that is a good idea. Chimps are like humans, stubborn, strong, and dense humans. Look, the bonobo is almost the same size as him, and probably 20x as strong. 2-3000 years down the road we start letting them out of the cages, along with 6 foot full size chimpanzees, (that are more aggressive then horny unlike those lil guys), and planet of the apes doesn't seem far off.

>> ^KamikazeCricket:
nobody is perfect. Kanzi did a great job! Chimpanzees love to do exercises like this. It's a game to them and it really helps develop their brains, much like teaching a baby how to stack blocks or whatever.

I'm a little confused about the welder's mask though. What is that for?


The mask is so he responds purely to vocal commands and not body language, reading lips, etc.

nobody is perfect. Kanzi did a great job! Chimpanzees love to do exercises like this. It's a game to them and it really helps develop their brains, much like teaching a baby how to stack blocks or whatever.


I'm a little confused about the welder's mask though. What is that for?

More of Kanzi here...

http://www.videosift.com/video/Chimpanzee-understands-spoken-English

"It's often said that an adult chimpanzee weighing in at 150 pounds is three to seven times stronger than a human being."

What's the story? Not a lot was known until recently about this issue, but a study published this April in the journal Current Anthropology explored the issue at a new level of detail.

Our surplus motor neurons allow us to engage smaller portions of our muscles at any given time. We can engage just a few muscle fibers for delicate tasks like threading a needle, and progressively more for tasks that require more force. Conversely, since chimps have fewer motor neurons, each neuron triggers a higher number of muscle fibers. So using a muscle becomes more of an all-or-nothing proposition for chimps. As a result, chimps often end up using more muscle than they need.

Our finely-tuned motor system makes a wide variety of human tasks possible. Without it we couldn't manipulate small objects, make complex tools or throw accurately. And because we can conserve energy by using muscle gradually, we have more physical endurance—making us great distance runners.
Great apes, with their all-or-nothing muscle usage, are explosive sprinters, climbers and fighters, but not nearly as good at complex motor tasks.

In addition to fine motor control, Walker suspects that humans also may have a neural limit to how much muscle we use at one time. Only under very rare circumstances are these limits bypassed—as in the anecdotal reports of people able to lift cars to free trapped crash victims.

"Add to this the effect of severe electric shock, where people are often thrown violently by their own extreme muscle contraction, and it is clear that we do not contract all our muscle fibers at once," Walker writes. "So there might be a degree of cerebral inhibition in people that prevents them from damaging their muscular system that is not present, or not present to the same degree, in great apes." Source

>> ^burdturgler:
But that's not how it went. Honestly, I will try to be fair here and say it's impossible for either one of us to truly know what what was in either of their heads during these moments of the interview

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself, which is why I am so confused why you are adamantly sure that Attenborough hates Christianity and instigated an unprovoked attack against it.

Instead we hear about how God created a worm to eat a kids eye. Where did that come from? Does that make sense to you in the context of all of this?

The interview begins with Attenborough talking about patterns and behaviors that he finds in nature (ie. Chimpanzees). The topic of the interview then swings to religion and philosophy. Therefore, I find it perfectly natural that Attenborough used a example from nature (parasitic worm) to illustrate his views on religion and philosophy.

>> ^dag:
I feel bad for Kanzi having to do all of these ridiculous things like some kind of trained monkey.

I don't quite agree. I think Kanzi has the opportunity to show that verbal communication is possible with an ape. That's why the keeper wore the mask, so it would be certain that he didn't respond to facial ques. It doesn't seem like Kanzi isn't enjoying the experience, he gladfully cooperates with the instructions. The bond between the keeper and Kanzi seems quite strong. You should look up more videos on Kanzi, it's really quite eye opening. Few quotes from wiki:

"Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick."
"Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has observed Kanzi in communication to his sister. In this experiment, Kanzi was kept in a separate room of the Great Ape Project and shown some yogurt. Kanzi started vocalizing the word "yogurt" in an unknown "language"; his sister, who could not see the yogurt, then pointed to the lexigram for yogurt."
"Kanzi's accomplishments also include tool use and tool crafting. Kanzi is an accomplished stone tool maker and is quite proud of his ability to flake Oldowan style cutting knives. He learned this skill from Dr. Nick Toth, who is an anthropologist with the Stone Age Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. The stone knives Kanzi creates are very sharp and can cut animal hide and thick ropes."
"In one demonstration shown on the television show Champions of the Wild, Kanzi was shown playing the arcade game Pac-Man and understanding how to beat it."

Tragically these apes are showing us how closely are related to us and might even to be able to grasp aspects of our culture and bring meaningful interaction between human and another species. I mean tragically because of how these creatures have been seen and treated in the past up to now.

*promote motherfucker

1) my feet stink.
2) i have a high IQ - can't remember what is because my memory's fucking awful.
3) i swear like a bastard.
4) i know next to nothing about politics.
5) i've only owned a car once. i paid for it to be scrapped after a week.
6) my brother is one of gordon ramsay's chefs, i'm extremely jealous.
7) i'm horrific at paying bills, through sheer disorganisation and laziness.
i stopped growing vertically when i was approx. 16yrs old.
9) i can't get enough marmite down my throat.
10) i can go days without showering.
11) i have a weak bladder.
12) i often find it hard to have conversations with non-friends. it's not that i'm shy - it's just the part of my brain responsible for storytelling is inactive/missing.
13) all of my socks have holes in them.
14) asparagus affects the smell of my urine within minutes of its consumption. literally.
15) i wish i'd studied architecture at university rather than a course which woulod ultimately get me nowhere in life.
16) even though i never use uppercase letters and realise the hypocrisy, the incorrect application of apostrophes riles me.
17) i really really want a pet chimpanzee.
18) water makes me sneeze.
19) it deeply saddens me to witness the now widespread incorrect usage of the word 'literally'.
20) hair growth on my body is extremely sporadic.
21) i can sleep standing up.
22) i love going for a shit.
23) i'm utterly addicted to the world wide tubes.
24) going out and getting drunk is the best thing on earth. and also the worst.
25) i fucking hate smoking and cannot stop.

Your video, Chimpanzee Ridin on a Segway - Bam BaBaBam Bam Bam, has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Chimp attack 911 call: 'He's ripping her apart'
By Stephanie Gallman
9:09 a.m. EST, Wed February 18, 2009

(CNN) -- A Connecticut woman pleaded for police to "please hurry" to save a friend from an attack by a pet chimpanzee, according to emotional 911 recordings released Tuesday by Stamford police.

"He's ripping her apart," Sandra Herold, 70, tells dispatchers about her pet, Travis.

With the chimp squealing in the background, Herold cries out, "He's killed my friend!"

The victim, Charla Nash, 55, remains hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after the chimp, once featured in television commercials for Coca-Cola and Old Navy, attacked her Monday afternoon, police said.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'jane goodall, chimpanzees, environment, africa, children, future, hope' to 'TED talks, jane goodall, chimpanzees, environment, africa, children, future, hope' - edited by jonny

Chimpanzees/Chimps.

There are a bunch of them: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Monkey-Ed%20Movie%22

That's a chimpanzee, not a monkey.

Absolutely brilliant!
..and great sound too.

....and we humans sure do sound a lot like anxious chimpanzees when we are scarred.