I went to an absolutely amazing seminar today by Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa from Kyoto University Primate Centre.. he does completely cool research with chimpanzees both in Japan and field study in west africa. Stevie Walker was in the audience while this cute, cuddly, smiley and very funny Japanese man was telling us about how clever chimps actually are! and all the neat stuff they can do.. it was organised by Birkbeck CBCD so he show videos and piccies of baby chimps developing theory of mind in exactly the same way as sproglets. they copy you sticking your tongues out, smile back at their mommys, look where you are point, imitate actions, pretend play, and can deceive.. (ha! stick that SFW!!)
all through the talk he was throwing in chimpanzee impressions (proper full volume hooting and WOO-AH WOO-AH WOO-OO-ing!!!) and at the end in answer to one question about language he went through a complete repertoire of chimp vocalizations. completely cool… i want to be him!!
