As we try to show in this book, however, the language we tested and

reported – in our capacity as ‘good scientists’ – was not the language

Kanzi actually acquired by sharing life with humans.The bonobos’ lan-

guage has been underreported. The daily linguistic dramas have been

invisible.

On everyday skeptics despite everyday reality of talking with ape:

p. 117-118:

Is scepticism reluctance to acknowledge our primal culture?

Why is scepticism regarding the possession of language considered a

reasonable attitude towards apes such as Kanzi, when it appears absurd

with regard to us? As far as we know, no one has tried to prove, scien-

tifically, that we humans do not merely have the attitude that we have

language, but actually do possess it. Language tests are, of course, carried

out by speech therapists in order to determine whether certain indi-

viduals have specific difficulties in speaking or understanding language.

But such work does not aim at determining whether humanity possesses

language. If someone, just to be absolutely sure, tried to prove language

in humans by designing a rigorous test, it would be profoundly comical

to see this experimenter discuss the test informally with the persons

who accepted to participate as subjects of the experiment. What if the

result turned out to be negative, would a blushing experimenter whisper

to her research subjects that all of us lack language? Our knowledge that

we have language is not achieved through science and cannot be made

more certain through scientific research. It is nonsense to imagine this

knowledge as the result of a clever experiment. The most immediate

facts of life are not scientific. So, how can a sceptical attitude be oblig-

atory with regard to Kanzi’s language? Why should a clever experiment

be possible in his case, when it is nonsense in our own?

Few persons have thought deeper about this problem than Talbot

J. Taylor, and we turn to him for help (see Taylor 1994, and Savage-

Rumbaugh, Shanker and Taylor 1998). Taylor analyzes the problem in

terms of rhetoric. What we are inclined to say about animals and

humans is normally different.These inclinations result in two types of

rhetoric: one about animals, another about humans. Although many

dog owners honestly can say about their dog, ‘his barking means he

wants us to take him for a walk’, it is generally acceptable, especially in

academic culture, to be sceptical and to say that the dog’s barking ‘really

does not mean anything’. It is also acceptable to be sceptical more gen-

erally, and to ask whether any animal vocalizations can be said to have

meaning. <....>

After describing this asymmetry, Taylor asks the more

fundamental question of why the asymmetry is there. Why is a form of

scepticism that appears reasonable with regard to animals absurd with

regard to humans? Here is Taylor’s answer:

While the commonplace adoption of a skeptical attitude to everyday

metalinguistic remarks about humans would constitute a dangerous

threat to the metalinguistically mediated understanding of human

behavior that is essential to our participation in and maintenance

of social life as we know it, this is not the case for the adoption

of a skeptical attitude toward everyday metalinguistic remarks about

animals. It is here that one may find the source of the rhetorical

asymmetry between scientific discourse about the communicational

and cognitive abilities of animals and scientific discourse about

human possession of those abilities. (Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker and

Taylor 1998: 153)

Taylor’s explanation, then, is that there is reluctance to adopt a scepti-

cal attitude to human communication because it would, if put into prac-

tice, threaten our human social life. The daily hardship maintaining a

bi-species culture in a society that is not prepared for this possibility

illustrates Taylor’s explanation. Scepticism concerning the possibility

that an animal can communicate and live as a fellow-creature with

humans is not only a theoretical view: it is also an aspect of our regu-

lations, institutions and even our architecture. It is hard political labour

to protect the intermediary Pan/Homo culture. It is threatened almost

daily, in Taylor’s sense, and ape language research often tends to balance

on the verge of tragedy. We are trying to overcome many of these dif-

ficulties in our new facility in Des Moines, Iowa, not least the architec-

tural ones: the apes will have greater freedom of movement than visitors

will have, for the Great Ape Trust of Iowa is meant to be their home.