Orangutans To Skype Between Zoos With iPads

I think you might be going a little far here. If you watch the video, the apps they can actually use are things like "touch the screen and it changes color". And it's not like they can actually launch an app themselves, or pick a video and watch it. They're not about to open up a Skype phonebook and say "I want to call Ookokook", the trainer would has to do everything and then hold it up for them.

Just because these particular Orangutans haven't learned (or might not have the capacity) how to properly utilize an iPad in the way that humanity has, doesn't mean that given the opportunity and the funding of such research in regards to apes that such walls can't eventually be torn down.

It is a relatively simple process to program apps and change the icons of apps to lexigrams geared towards apes, and I find the idea of giving apes like Kanzi, as well as other apes that have worked extensively with primatologists, exposure to such technology as worthy enough to hold sufficient merit.

Much like learning a foreign language, if we teach all these exposed and inclined apes the same 'words' it isn't a huge leap to believe that in a few generations it could manifest itself as something that is passed on within the confines of each society of apes from generation to generation.

Even across species Kanzi the Bonobo picked up some ASL from watching videos of Koko the Gorilla. With a little determination on our part, this could be the start of something much greater.

Humans came up the hard way, but that doesn't mean that apes have to go that route.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/FANXYkA-oOA/orangutans-to-skype-between-zoos-with-ipads

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