Cross-species Technology
PC Week - 08/02/99 - page 9

Apes speak through computers

Researchers at Georgia State University are giving apes a voice.

The school's Language Research Center is using flexible flat-panel displays
hooked into speech recognition software to teach a group of chimpanzees and
other apes to express themselves in sentences, the British Broadcasting Corp.
reported last week. 

The touch-sensitive display presents the primates with hundreds of symbols
representing words or concepts in their vocabulary. The animals are learning
to touch the symbols in sequence to form simple sentences, researchers said. 

The center's prize pupil, a bonobo chimpanzee named Panbanisha, knows about
3,000 individual words, the report said. 

The LRC's work aims to increase understanding of the role of development,
language and environment during child rearing, the BBC said.

http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwlrc/index.html

Caption: Kanzi readies for a speech lesson.

