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Nim Chimpsky: the chimp they tried to turn into a human
Guardian UK ^ | 07/24/011 | Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy

Posted on 07/23/2011 6:12:27 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen

In the early 70s, a primate named Nim Chimpsky was the subject of an experiment whose purpose was to learn whether language is innate. Now, his strange life has been turned into a documentary by Man on Wire director James Marsh.

Whether he's zooming past in a pushchair, perched on a lavatory seat or getting a little too intimate with a passing cat, it's impossible not to be charmed by Nim the chimpanzee. Nim Chimpsky, to give him his full title, was born at the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma, in the early 70s. Highly intelligent, he was chosen to be the subject of a language experiment at Columbia University, called Project Nim, that aimed to discover whether or not chimpanzees could use grammar to create sentences

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
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To: Krankor

Now that is funny, LOL


21 posted on 07/23/2011 6:42:57 PM PDT by org.whodat (Speaker West, name sounds good.)
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To: SC DOC

Hell those Libyan ragtags needs that man, the will advance. LOL


22 posted on 07/23/2011 6:46:02 PM PDT by org.whodat (Speaker West, name sounds good.)
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To: Kid Shelleen
Oliver
23 posted on 07/23/2011 6:51:35 PM PDT by SERKIT ("Blazing Saddles" explains it all......)
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To: ken21; americanophile

Undoubtedly the chimp’s name was a take-off of Choamsky’s. But the chimp is better looking and likely more intelligent.


24 posted on 07/23/2011 6:55:43 PM PDT by Joann37
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To: Joann37

si.


25 posted on 07/23/2011 7:05:03 PM PDT by ken21 (liberal + rino progressive media hate palin, bachman, cain...)
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To: americanophile

Yes, and Chimpsky thinks that Chomsky is an idiot.


26 posted on 07/23/2011 7:10:59 PM PDT by alstewartfan ("I'll just go back to the dream I was having, before love went astray." Al Stewart)
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To: Joann37

Probably smells better too.


27 posted on 07/23/2011 7:15:35 PM PDT by Lucas McCain
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To: mongo141

Dang beat me to it!!!!


28 posted on 07/23/2011 7:18:50 PM PDT by WePledge (Ich werde fur immer ein Hollenhund werden. Semper Fidelis)
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To: SERKIT; little jeremiah; Elsie; Tennessee Nana; Vendome; Lazamataz
Hugh Downs did a special with a very aware Chimpanzee. Thirty years later, Hugh was astonished to again meet tht chimp and be recognized by him. There is a being behind the eyes. Yes, a chimpanzee, but a being, a living, aware being. Sam the chimp was apparently more aware then other chimps, perhaps due to a life working with humans. But ...

Consider for a moment that every species with a brain, and especially those with a layered brain, have a range of intelligence. If the human species has Einsteins and Hawkings, can we dismiss that other species do not also? We do that, dismiss them as merely animals, because we are the weaker species in love, high in intellect but very lacking in empathetic love.

I live on a farm. One year a cow gave birth to what I can only describe as a very smart calf. I named him Einstein. The farm was no longer being run by my family, so the fate of the animals was not in my hands. I could go on and on about the things Einstein did that made him so different from the other cattle, but in the end, sadly, the people running the farm wanted females, to bear young ones for profits. Einstein was sent to the scrotum snippers and later to auction.

I sometimes imagine that Einstein gave whomever acquired him a little bit of hell. He could master locks and chains and fence gates. He had a refined sense of smell, so that medicines delivered in 'watering troughs' he would not touch. And he appeared to understand some human words, as he proved the day they came to try and coax him into the cattle trailer for transport to the vet for inoculations and snipping.

My old heart aches for the animals we take so crassly for granted. The cattle show they know they're about to be slaughtered when they tremble at the meat processing ramp.

What the hell was God thinking when he made us so damned cold in our hearts? ... Or is it we who have chilled the warm hearts of the children? ever seen the training videos of Palestinian training their littlest children to hate and slaughter, so they can oppose 'the Jews'? Yet we question where God commanded Saul to take no booty, no living thing from certain of the Israelite's enemies.

29 posted on 07/23/2011 7:25:02 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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To: Kid Shelleen

To me, such a film is more illustrative of the people trying to project human qualities on a chimp than it shows of chimp nature. The story made me think of that case up in CT, where the woman kept an adult male chimp in her house, in a situation that was frankly disturbing, at least until it was ended with the tragic disfigurement of her friend.


30 posted on 07/23/2011 7:25:21 PM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: Kid Shelleen

If Nim is a male chimp they are lucky he didn’t go ape sh**(no pun intended)and start biting and killing male humans as many male chimps have done.


31 posted on 07/23/2011 7:28:50 PM PDT by calex59
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To: Kid Shelleen

Chimps are good shots too.

S African soldiers give chimp AK-47:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU


32 posted on 07/23/2011 7:40:45 PM PDT by garjog
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To: MHGinTN

What an insightful post. Thanks for sharing.


33 posted on 07/23/2011 7:43:22 PM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance On Parade)
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To: okie01

Thank you for understanding ... but I need to stop that sort of deep personal revelation stuff.


34 posted on 07/23/2011 7:45:38 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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To: MHGinTN

Thank you for pinging me.

As I like to say “Those eyes are not just there for decoration. There is someone looking at you through those eyes.”

The Vedas teach that every living being is an eternal soul. The consciousness level is different in different species obviously, and even among the same species.

The cruelty exhibited by so many humans is the result of envy towards God, the hearts are coarsened and hardened, and the more cruel acts, the more dirty the hearts become.

That is why this world is so painful, no other reason.

The good thing is that with God all things are possible, so individual redemption is always an open door. I pray that more and more humans will know this to be true.


35 posted on 07/23/2011 7:46:37 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. CSLewis)
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To: little jeremiah

I happen to believe that life is sourced in an actual dimension as real as dimension space or dimension time. The dimension of life force has three variable expressions: will, emotion, and mind (cognition). As such, life is sourced beyond time and space, thus life is ‘timeless’ ... and spirit is also, but I won’t again toddle off into that discussion, on the Internet. It hurts my old heart to see humans treating animals as nothing, mere meat. God gave to us the power to consume them as out sustenance, but we need not dismiss them as nothing but meat.


36 posted on 07/23/2011 7:53:33 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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To: americanophile
You are absolutely incorrect about. I have it from good friends that he is teaching string theory at Harvard (although, it would make more sense if he was teaching constitutional law at Harvard).
37 posted on 07/23/2011 8:21:45 PM PDT by Aussiebabe
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To: MHGinTN

My studies (which are prayerful study, not just theoretical,) show that the soul is an eternal spark, emanating from and created by God, and can never be killed or destroyed; it is of a different energy that the physical body or even mental ideas or thoughts.

As such, each body is inhabited by an eternal soul, with (for most) an invisible and unbreakable connection to God, but covered with wrong desires (those that are in opposition to God’s will) and the physical body. The more a person desires to surrender the will, in love, to God, the more the person can experience his real existence as soul - and becomes a sort of witness to the body and the vagaries of the mental state. Like sitting on the bank of a stream, watching it go by.

It hurts my old heart as well; I cannot read anything about cruelty to animals (or children, or the elderly or infirm), it’s like ripping out my own heart.


38 posted on 07/23/2011 8:43:30 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. CSLewis)
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To: little jeremiah

Selah. Sister.


39 posted on 07/23/2011 8:50:06 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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To: MHGinTN

((Big Hug!))


40 posted on 07/23/2011 8:58:15 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. CSLewis)
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