Page 31 - Fourways Gardens February 2021

Nature

it is going to be difficult. Just look at the
problems we have among ourselves. We
Homo sapiens are divided by 6 500 spoken
languages. how many educated people
can make sense of this brief passage:
Ha kihult, hozzaadjuk a karikara vagott
kolbaszt, a zoldborsot es az aprora
vagott fott tojassal, I db nyers tojassal,
sozzuk borsozzuk, es az egeset jol
osszekeverjuk.

Were these the words that stirred middle
eastern people to rise up against ottoman
rule? or are they from an instruction manual
for building a chicken house? in fact these
words are from an hungarian cookbook on
how to make a stuffed beef roll.

yet here we are trying to communicate
with creatures that are totally cocooned in
their own secret styles of communicating.

or on the american Prairies, or in the as one scientist put it, a breakthrough if we are to achieve success, which is the
hot, grassy plains of africa, researchers would be the most game-changing event most likely candidate? most people would
have, for decades, been observing and in the history of biology. it would transform put their money on the chimpanzee,
analysing the actions and utterances of the way we view our fellow creatures. our nearest relative. Chimps are closer
animals, wild and domestic, hoping to to humans than they are to all the other
devise a way to converse with one. in truth, we haven’t got far. some argue we primates. yet despite almost a century of
haven’t got anywhere at all. but in pursuit research into ape communication, we’ve
so far, research has demonstrated of this holy Grail, scientists are making achieved very, very little. the first serious
how organically and behaviourally some amazing discoveries. attempt was in 1931 when an American
we mammals are linked to each other.
Today, the world’s 6 000 different kinds
of mammals range from south africa’s
4 gram pygmy shrew to the 100 ton blue
whale off our coast.

the evolutionary paths of all of us
mammals parted from a common
ancestor 80 to 90 million years ago, yet
skeletally we have retained essentially
the same components. even inside the
dolphin’s flippers there are recognisable
finger bones, wrists and arms. the giraffe
has the same number of neck vertebrae
as humans - seven. in our social order too,
there are remarkable similarities. We are
but variations of a theme.

but there is one fundamental difference:
communication.

the rest of mammalia doesn’t give a hoot,
or a whine, or a bark, about it, but humans
are currently putting in a great deal of
effort, seeking a way to communicate,
on an intelligent level. new technologies
are constantly being applied and, lately,
there has been cautious optimism from
very diverse research institutions.

Fourways Gardens • 29 • February 2021