Me Like Bananas

[batbat]

Karl Pilkington once claimed, in a Monkey News, that a woman working at an animal sanctuary was fired from her job, because a chimpanzee wanted to play with her breasts and she refused. The 'foreman' apparently demanded that she comply with the wishes of the 'monkey', and when she didn't she was summarily sacked.

Ricky and Steve ridiculed the story

Comments

[the23]

this transcript should be enough, alone, to put to bed forever the question of apes being able to use human language

what? one ape can't use human language so apes can't in general? some humans can't ffs.

[batbat]

I'm not sure what ffs means. But Koko is one of science's best efforts at getting an ape to 'talk', and if all she can come up with is meaningless random nouns then it's a good bet that yes, apes in general can't be taught to use human language. That doesn't mean one special genius ape sometime in the future might be able to learn ASL - but he or she will be the exception, not the rule.

[the23]

it means for fuck's sake. nice backtracking btw.....

[batbat]

Who's backtracking? If you're going to be pedantic, then fine...but when I said "put to bed forever the question of apes being able to use human language" I think it's pretty obvious I meant in the broad sense.

Sort of a bit like saying, "If I put this book on that table, the book will rest on top of the table." Not true in every case, because there is a concievable remote chance that the molecules in two solid objects could arrange themselves in such a way that one can pass through the other. But broadly speaking a book will rest on top of a table when put there. And apes can't use human language.