[Raggs]

Hmm, I'd say that discrediting the parrots skills is perhaps not so easy. These are animals that when you place a plate in front of them, containing an array of shapes, in various number, then ask them how many orange objects, they tell you the correct number, then you ask them how many squares, and they reply. This suggests to me an understanding of the concept of counting, and of indeed a square? How about yourself? How do we teach our children language? Mostly at first, with reward, big smiles at new words, saying mama etc. We give positive stimulus, and so the child tries to learn more words, it may not get praised for every one, but it receives a positive stimulus, just as though rewarding with food. I'm sure that apes recieve a positive stimulus when they learn language also?

You saying food to your cat is basically pavlovs dog responses, it is not the same as you asking your cat how many bowls of food are present, or to pick out the bowl of whiskers cat food from the selection of various dishes, which is what these parrots (and chimps) are achieving.

I agree that our basic ability is higher than possibly all other species. We imitate with accuracy, not perfect (which is an advantage), but very well. We have a very large capacity to learn. We can store a huge amount of knowledge, and we can use tools. However, if you showed a human being from 5,000 years ago, a bottle of wine with a cork inserted, then handed them a corkscrew, do you think they would work it out? It can be tested I suppose with children, give them semi complex tools (hammer is pretty easy, bashing things with rocks has been happening for years), and see if they can work it out. I'd say no. But show them how, and it's all sorted, chimps can manage this too, but they don't actively teach, so it's not passed on so successfully and can be lost.

A four year old child is capable of a lot of things, but their capacities are limited, but in my mind this isn't the major problem chimps face, it's the fact they don't teach each other. In humans children teach each other, the whole time people are teaching people, it's an innate quality, and extremely important one. Innovators allow us to advance and they occur in nature (chimps fishing for termites, using leaves as a sponge, using spears, birds using hooks to get food from holes etc etc), but we only advance successfully if the social attributes of the species are correct. Chimps (at least one) are capable of understanding language to certainly a high enough necessary degree for a tribal level, there are 120000 people out there speaking taki taki, which contains 340 words. They have the capacity to learn enough to form a tribal society. But information is lost, and takes a long time to learn, because of the lack of teaching. If you are taught you can learn more, faster, meaning less effort doing it, and more chance of innovation.