Give an animal a human voicebox

I have been noticing more and more reports etc suggesting that some anmals are quite a bit more intelligent than we had assumed. one of the reasons we cant test this is due to the difficulty or impossibility in communication with them.

It has already been established that scientists are able to produce chimeras, mice with human brain cells etc.

One could go far enough to genetically engineer an animal with human vocal cord or voice box, so it may produce human sounds, and, if intelligent enough, learn to speak human.

most animals have voice boxes and do have vocalizations which are used as a form of communications between other members of their species. In most cases though these vocalizations are very limited and only contain information such as danger! or food here etc.
Other species have a much wider range of communication between themselves. Examples of which, the dolphins and Whales. It has been theorized that their vocalizations contain alot more information than "normal" animals. There have been numerous studies done to decipher these communications as well as to reply to them. As of today, we have not been able to do this.
Think of the difficulty in deciphering other human languages. It took finding the rosetta stone to allow us to decipher other ancient languages. And that is human to human communications.
Now try to imagine attempting to communicate with another species, one that does not have the same basic tenets and needs that humans have.
A very daunting task to say the least. We will probably need another "rosetta stone" to do this.

children learn the human language. i think he was postulating that the animal would be born with a human voice box and could be then taught the human language.

Apparently it's not really possible, though they might develop a vocabulary of 500 words or so. We are having an interesting discussion on some of the details here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

A lot of our ability to speak comes from our close interactions with people speaking the language and making the sounds. We imitate them, and get most our early learning from that.

A lot of it is also our brains. You'd need a human brain or something very similar in certain aspects (or a very specific one I suppose) to speak the languages we do and to communicate as we do.

There may be another piece in the pie of communication that is important. It’s hard to fathom and well I even don't always come to complete understanding and terms with it, but some scientists believe and are studying dolphins, whales, and bird’s usage of telepathy to communicate with. We know that when we think we generate images and sounds within in our inner minds but what if other creatures are able to widely transmit this form of thought and communication.

We sort of have our own form of this communication with film and TV, but perhaps other creatures are able to use projected images and sound in ways that we have not developed or are capable of yet. Scientists and teachers believe that images and sound enable us to learn at a faster rate then text so maybe these creatures are actually using a higher rate of communication then we give them credit for. Perhaps we are moving more towards projected thought ourselves. We certainly have developed the tools for it, and you are using one of them right now to read this-

Tool usage and language are two forms we currently measure intelligence by in other animals and from time to time we are startled by the fact that more and more animals are effectively using both. But we are still basing there intelligence on our relationship to them. This is part of our god complex in my opinion, it is what enables us to justify using them as resources much like we have justified using slaves as lesser’s to help maintain our positions over them. There may come a time when we are looked back upon as archaic in our beliefs and relations towards other living creatures, just like we look back on Hitler and say he was a mad man and barbaric.

A dogwith a dog voice box will go "Ruff, Roff, Raff" or whatever. Chances are a dog with a human voice box will still go "Ruff, Roff, Raff" just with a more complex vocal range.

You also have to take into account our more advanced tongue muscles. I didnt think of that. so yea you probably have to give it a human tongue.......which would stop it from sweating.....which would mean you have to give it human skin.....which means it would lose its hair..... ah stuff it i'll leave the excessive thought to the experts

Or if best scenario turns out to happen!......the dog endowed with human vocal cords, with the capacity to make human noises does infact make human noises, and perhaps say "rargablarbenooneemoo" or something. OK maybe its not intelligent enough to learn english, so put it in a cat! or a monkey! woohoo! sigh im tired now byeee!

sorry its impossible for any animal i can think of. just a voice box wouldnt cut it. you would also need certain muscles in your tongue that every animal lacks.

I remember when i was a sophmore in Highschool that i had an idea to use the vibrations of the animals own vocal cords on a device that was programmed with the voice technology that chimps are using to talk to trainers. Pretty much the animal would be limited to feed me, i want attention, ow,....things like that. Really simple talk but still they would talk to you. Animals still have a form of communication using body language and growls and groans. For cats it seems to be a bit tricky as the pitch of their vocals can change finitely making the possiblity that they know more then food attention and pain.


-Aza

Just like the Simpsons episode, making those babies talk.
Heh, anyways.

I think you guys are on to something, although it's quite obvious animals are not as intellegent as humans, I do feel they use more communication than we give them credit for.

Intellegence all really comes down to how "human" the animals acts and sounds anyways, so I mean the best is Parrots because they can mimic human language, I remember just a day or too ago reading about a parrot that spoke English and understood it enough to have conversations, not amazing ones, just like little kid type ones.

They also think it's telepathic.

Intellegence all really comes down to how "human" the animals acts and sounds anyways

Not really......we only deem something intelligent on how much we can make it......put its paw on the food flashcard when we say "food!" etc. Just because we deem something unintelligent doesnt NECCESSARILY make it stupid. Its just its very hard to communicate as it obviously doesnt speak human.

As for the tongue thing i already mentioned our tongue are obviously more sophisticated so they would probably need human tongues aswell.

Perhaps Putting it in a lion. its fairly sophisticated. A dolphin would be ideal but since its a sea mammal its facial set up is very different and would cause too many problems. A lion has a large, manuverable mouth, has a skull already similar to humans (which is what i meant about the dolphins), give it a human voicebox and maybe with the ability to talk like us will perhaps make more human noises and eventually say words.....who knows!!

or!!! more obviously!! give monkeys our more sophisticated voice box and tongues.

I had a dream once that I had a talking cat, but it only wanted to talk about T.V. sitcoms.

I have seen many times dogs which can vocalize words like "sausages" or "Iruvyu" or some such. The dog could be trained to imitate humans, with a human voice box, possibly a lot more convincingly.

The question is, would it actually be communicating or just responding to conditioned or natural cues.

A voice box in a Gorilla, or similar would be quite interesting, considering the successes enjoyed teaching them sign language, etc.

Um, I'm not sure that giving an animal a human voice is really a good idea.

Look what happened with Koko, the gorilla, who speaks sign language.

She sexually harasses female caretakes, by asking them to see their nipples:

www.law.com...

So what will we get? show me your nipples? Or a dog that says "I wanna smell your butt?"



It would be interesting to know what some animals think, and many of them are very intelligent. I just think that science should concentrate on deciphering the animals own language

Originally posted by Uma
She sexually harasses female caretakes, by asking them to see their nipples:
So what will we get? show me your nipples? Or a dog that says "I wanna smell your butt?"

Well, animals with animal morality would find the whole covering up of the nipples thing strange, so we have more than just langauge to work out!!

As for smelling butts, he can smell mine, but I am not returning the favor!!!!!!

THAT IS FREAKY!!!!!!!



and part is

Wow im really glad i started this thread.

Also on that note i remember hearing something similar about a chimp who fell in love with its trainer and once it reached maturity tried to you know....

weird that it would be inter-species affection.....

Originally posted by Shadow88
weird that it would be inter-species affection.....

Well, gorillas and humans are very closely related, and are very similar physically. Not only that, but it's natural to be attracted to somone who constantly takes care of you day in and day out, especially when that person is one of the only members of the opposite sex you see. No reason it wouldn't be that way for gorillas too.

What a stupid idea shadow. Any success with your time travel machine btw?

Don't feed/harass the membership, picard. Play nice.

[edit on 6/16/2005 by Amorymeltzer]