chimpanzee Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

December 3, 2024December 2, 2024

The Animal Understanding of Death

What do animals understand about death? That question has become such an area of interest that it has a name—comparative thanatology. Dr. Susana Monso has written a number of books and articles on the animal understanding of death, with special attention to opossums and chimpanzees. In her books, Monso provides information about the physiological changes in the opossum when it “plays dead.”

In a Time magazine article, Dr. Monso gave accounts of animals dealing with death. She told of a newborn albino chimp that other chimps were afraid of. When the dominant male killed the baby chimp, the behavior of the chimpanzee troop changed dramatically to a display of curiosity. Other cases cited are an orca who carried her dead baby over 1000 miles for 17 days and a gorilla who was weaned but attempted to suckle from its dead mother’s breast.

Dr. Monso argues that the animal understanding of death differs from human understanding. She says our human bias affects our view of comparative thanatology, but she believes animals understand death in their own way. Are the chimp, orca, and gorilla displaying grief, or are we interpreting them in light of what humans would feel and do? Do carnivores have empathy for the herbivores they eat? Those questions reflect what Dr. Monso calls an intellectual anthropocentrism bias.

That bias is reflected in some humans who refuse to eat meat because they feel empathy for the animal that died. To suggest that you won’t eat anything requiring death means you won’t eat anything. If you eat a plant or the seed of the plant, something has to die. Death is part of the design of life, and life would be impossible if nothing died. Either everything would die of starvation, and Earth would become devoid of life, or animal populations would overfill the planet.

The biblical understanding is that the Creator of life gave humans a special place in the creation. In Genesis 9:1-3, God tells Noah that all animal life would have the fear of humans and that humans would be responsible for managing all of life. Verse 3 also equates animal life with plant life. “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you just like the green plant – I have given you all things.”

God gave only humans the ability to comprehend life after death. Animals’ understanding of the death of one of their kind is rooted in survival. We see this in the biblical discussion of this subject and the evidence available to all of us.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
Reference: “Animals Understand Death Too” in Time magazine for October 28, 2024

April 21, 2023April 19, 2023

What Are the Chances?

Advocates of unguided naturalistic evolution say that evolution could have gone in many directions, and we are lucky to be here. But what are the chances of evolution producing you and me as we are today? Evolutionists would say the changes are 100% since we are already here. But, if we go back to the cosmic creation event, or “big bang,” the chances that we would have evolved are nil. On the other hand, if God planned and guided the creation because He had us in mind, the chances are 100%.

The DNA that makes us who we are physically is a highly complex strand of information. What are the chances that it could have written itself by chance? First of all, information comes from intelligence, not chance. Calculating the likelihood of something after it has happened is a statistical fallacy. After all, DNA is here, and so are we, so the chances are 100%. But what are the chances if we go back before the fact? What are the chances that non-living chemicals could come together in a just-right way to form the first living cell? Then what is the statistical evidence for that first cell multiplying and modifying by random chance mutations and natural selection to create humans?

One imagined scenario involves a billion chimpanzees typing on a billion keyboards for a billion years, accidentally typing one line of Shakespeare. What are the chances of that? Well, the short answer is that it will never happen. Computer keyboards have various numbers of keys, but the old-fashioned typewriters had 58, so let’s go with that number.

Forget Shakespeare. Look for the line “I love you more.” without quotation marks. That is a total of 16 letters, spaces, and a period. With 58 keys and 16 letters, what are the chances of accidentally typing that line? To compute that, you would have to multiply 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58 X 58. That is a total of 16 times. If you want to try it, go ahead, but it will probably exceed the capacity of your calculator. The answer would be 16.4 trillion quadrillion typing attempts.

Typing continuously at a speed equivalent to 45 words per minute, it would take 2,100 trillion years to have a 50/50 chance that one of those chimps would type that phrase. Absolutely nobody thinks that the Earth is anywhere close to 2,100 trillion years old. Nobody even suggests that the universe is that old. For this thought experiment, we are only looking for one short line of text, “I love you more.” That is nothing compared to the complex system of life on this planet.

The bottom line is that we can’t explain life or the fine-tuned physical constants of the universe by chance alone. But we can explain those things if God planned and guided the creation because He had us in mind. With God, our chances of being here were 100% from the beginning. (See Genesis 1:1.)

Reference: “Chances are…” by Bob Berman on Astronomy.com

For more on this topic see “Arranging Books on a Shelf“

October 22, 2021October 21, 2021

A Chimp Named Washoe

In the 1960s, a husband and wife team conducted an experiment with a chimp named Washoe. R. Allen Gardner was a psychologist, and his wife Beatrix was a zoologist. They took a young chimpanzee and attempted to raise it like a human child. The name came from a native American tribe and Washoe County, Nevada.

The couple taught Washoe American Sign Language (ASL), which they said he learned very quickly. Over time, Washoe learned 350 words and used them in combination, such as “Gimme Sweet.” R. Allen Gardner recently passed away, and his work has been revived in several popular magazines and journals.

When Gardner published the report about raising a chimp named Washoe, some people used it to say that chimps are merely less developed humans. They said the Gardner’s had to use ASL because the anatomical structure of a chimpanzee’s mouth and throat was simply inadequate to speak in human language. Furthermore, Washoe taught a bonobo named Kanzi to use ASL. Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, had a department called The Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute which closed in 2013. Washoe died there in 2007.

Scientists have conducted many experiments on the interaction between chimps and humans. Sometimes they had negative results when the chimps reverted to their normal behavior as seen in the wild. Animal rights proponents have pushed to have chimps receive the same rights as humans. Some evolutionists would point to this as proof that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor.

While the research is interesting and the creativity of the Gardners is impressive, there are some important things to point out. There has never been a question about whether animals can mimic human sounds. A parrot can rattle off human words and even phrases. There have even been dogs that could make a sound that resembles human words. Learning sounds and putting them into a form that elicits the desired response is not language. Webster defines language as “a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing,”

Mimicking a sound is not language. A chimp named Washoe using ASL is not human language. Humans project ideas, feelings, and artistic expression of life in music and art using language. The evidence supports a vast difference between animals and humans, as described in the Genesis account.
The Bible tells us that humans are uniquely created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). That refers to our spiritual makeup expressed in language and may or may not include sound. Baby humans learn to mimic, but it isn’t until they reach some level of maturity that they express spiritual creativity. Humans express the image of God in morality and the structure of society, as well as in language, art expression, and appreciation of beauty. The more we learn about animals, the more we appreciate how well-designed they are, but they are not humans.

We previously reported that Koko, the gorilla raised by Penny Patterson, also mastered ASL. You can read about that HERE and HERE.

September 5, 2020August 29, 2020

Wearing a Face Mask or Not

Wearing a Face Mask and using hand sanitizer

The Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation is a publication that provides articles on faith written by scientists who believe in God. In the September 2020 issue, editor James Peterson tells a story about standing in line at a home improvement store. While waiting, he had a discussion with a young couple about wearing a face mask. The two people’s response tells a lot about the condition of our society, thanks to the rejection of God and the Bible as a guide to life. Here is the discussion:

Peterson to Girl: “Are you aware that people wear surgical masks like the one I am wearing to protect other people, not themselves? I know for myself that I don’t like wearing a mask, and it does not protect me. It is to protect you.”
Girl to Peterson: “Masks don’t make any difference. You are either going to get the virus or not.”
Peterson: “So it is all fate? Nothing you can do?”
She nods with resignation.
Peterson to her friend: “You see it that way too?”
Friend to Peterson: “You don’t want to know what I think.”
Peterson to friend: “You sound like you may be angry.”
Friend to Peterson in a loud voice: “I am. I don’t give a **** about anybody but me. If it doesn’t help me, I’m not doing it, and you and nobody else is going to make me!!”

Peterson wrote, “So in 30 seconds flat, I had a reminder that we have our work cut out for us, and it matters.” As a Christian and a scientist, Peterson knows that wearing a face mask is only one small indicator of the state of our society. Later in Peterson’s article, he says, “Stuff 300 chimpanzees in a plane and they will tear the plane apart. Most humans just think about it.” His point is that evolutionists suggest that altruism and cooperation result in an evolutionary advantage for passing on our genes.

The American public’s response to the pandemic has been revealing and shows how the rejection of God has already influenced our society. Young adults will attend a party or go to a beach, knowing that they are exposing themselves to a contagious disease. The desire for pleasure while believing they are fit and will survive the virus drives them onward. Thinking of anything but their own immediate comfort causes a vast percentage of our population to refuse social distancing and wearing a face mask.

Some religious people who might care about others have accepted the political propaganda that the whole thing is fake until they see older family members die from the virus. Indeed, our work is cut out for us. We need to get back to basics. There is a God, and He has told us how to live. Taking care of the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16) and showing love for others (Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 19:18) should affect how we deal with the people around us.

You can read Peterson’s article HERE.

July 17, 2020July 14, 2020

Difference Between Communication and Language

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has made a career of studying bonobo apes. She would have us believe that there is no barrier between bonobos and humans. Her research raises the question of who we are as humans, and she would respond that we are just another animal. There are so many difficulties with this viewpoint that it is hard to know where to start. The most fundamental scientific problem is that there is a difference between communication and language.

Savage-Rumbaugh’s research is the main story in the July/August 2020 issue of Smithsonian magazine. She assumes that environment is not a factor in what distinguishes apes from humans, and she has lived with the bonobos in her research. A tool she uses in studying the bonobos is a “lexigram keyboard” with pictorial symbols corresponding to English words. One particular bonobo named Kanzi has used it to communicate with her. This ape could use some 660 English sentences functioning at a level higher than a two-and-a-half-year-old human child.

The difference between communication and language is an old issue. Aristotle wrote that animals could exchange information, but only humans could articulate what was just and unjust. The famous philosopher Rene’ Descartes in the 1600s, wrote that God had gifted human beings with souls, and, along with souls, language and consciousness. On this website and in our printed materials, we have talked about God’s design in animals that allows elaborate communication. Bees communicate by dancing information to other bees. Birds make sounds that carry meanings and warnings to other birds. The ultrasonic emissions of whales are elaborate communication tools.

Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that bonobos have a flexible capacity to communicate. However, she falls into the old trap of anthropomorphizing animal behavior – reading human interpretations into something an animal does. Statements such as, “She would look at me with a pleading expression on her face” is ascribing human interpretations to the ape’s facial expressions. The symbols on the keyboard are human symbols, and pigeons can learn to peck a particular symbol to get a desired result.

The Smithsonian article quotes one researcher as saying, “Work with Kanzi has always lived somewhere between rigorous science and social closeness and family life.” The difference between communication and language is a topic of hot debate. If you look up the word “language” you will see a significant variation in how different people define it. Humans have language that involves the meaning of symbols, the standards by which we measure behavior, and the values accepted by one’s peers.

The Bible deals with language, and God’s Spirit is involved with our language. When researchers have tried to humanize a chimpanzee by bringing it into their home, they do so with communication, but language is never a part of the process. Trying to turn an animal into a human being has disastrous results. We are created in the image of God, and language is a part of that image.

April 16, 2020April 13, 2020

Chimpanzees and Humans

Books and articles have been published indicating that chimpanzees and humans share about 98.7% of the same genes. So some have suggested that chimpanzees should be considered 98.7% human and have all the rights that humans enjoy. There have been lawsuits to remove chimps from zoos or restrictive areas so they can express their “humanness.”

Objective observers who study chimp behavior in detail do not see chimps as human. The Bible makes it clear that only humans are created in the image of God. Being in God’s image leads to attributes that are unique to humans. Those include not only creative ability such as in art and music, but they also include the way we treat one another. In Galatians 3:28, Paul makes it clear that as Christians, there is no distinction between one human and another. Paul specifically includes “no male nor female” in his list of who are equals. The whole notion of marriage (Genesis 2:24) and the role of women (Proverbs 31:10-31) esteem and protects women.

Chimpanzees and humans are not alike. In his book The Human Swarm, Dr. Mark Moffett describes the real life of female chimpanzees. When female chimps reach sexual maturity, they leave their group never to return. Female chimps are beaten up or ignored by males except when they are in heat, and then sex is forced upon them. Female chimps do not befriend each other. They give birth in a private, hidden place to avoid having their babies killed by other females. Male chimps have no role in parenting or protecting the mother and baby.

There is an adage said in jest that we often hear in the break room at the graduate center, “Make sure your data conforms to your conclusions.” It is easy for us to interpret animal behavior as human-like, especially comparing chimpanzees and humans. But we must recognize human uniqueness. We have heard the horror story of a pet chimp turning on and seriously injuring a human. You can remove the chimp from its fellow animals, but you cannot remove the animal behavior from the chimp. We are the only beings created in God’s image.

Reference: Skeptic Magazine, “The Misunderstood Art of Making Comparisons” Volume 25:1 2020

October 21, 2019October 16, 2019

Tool Use Is Not What Makes Humans Unique

Tool Use Is Not What Makes Humans Unique When I took my first anthropology course at Indiana University in 1958, the professors said that humans are the only animals that fashion and use tools. Later, scientists discovered that chimpanzees could smash rocks until they get one that has a sharp edge. Then they use that sharp edge as a tool to cut open fruit or dig for ants. Louis Leakey, the anthropology guru of that time, stated, “We are either going to have to change our definition of man, or invite the chimps to send a representative to the United Nations.” Tool use is not what makes humans unique.

Since that time, other animals have been observed using tools and some even manufacturing tools. Nuthatches can find a stick that they can slide under the bark of a tree to get at a bug. Crows can fashion a stick and use it to get into a milk bottle. The picture shows a macaque using a stone to smash a crab shell for food. Science now says that less than one percent of all animals use tools, but that number keeps growing. Discover Magazine for November 2019 (page 22), contained an article about skunks picking up a rock and pounding on the ice in a pond to make a hole for drinking.

The Bible does not identify humans according to tool use or any technological accomplishment. Mentally challenged humans might not make tools or use them, but they are still humans, no matter what their abilities. What defines humans is our spiritual makeup, which the Bible describes as being in the image of God. This image gives us the capacity to express ourselves in worship, in artistic expression, and in the ability to feel guilt and be sympathetic. Tool use is just one of many designed characteristics built into the DNA of many forms of life. But tool use is not what makes humans unique.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

March 22, 2019March 20, 2019

Guilty of Anthropomorphism

The Oxford English Dictionary defines anthropomorphism as “the attribution of human traits, emotions or intentions to non-human entities.” We are all guilty of anthropomorphism when we attribute the behavior of our pets to human emotions. The Oxford dictionary goes on to say that anthropomorphism “is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.”

When a dog is jumping around and barking and licking us, we assume that the behavior of the dog is because of joy. In reality, this is an instinctive behavior in animals when establishing dominance within the pack. When the same dog tucks its tail between its legs and slinks away, we assume it is feeling guilty when it is an act of submission for fear of being attacked.

Some scientists attempt to prove that humans are just animals acting out animal responses to various environments. They conduct experiments to show that animals do the things we think are unique to humans. An example is attempting to explain the human smile. For us humans, a smile is an expression of happiness, warmth, and friendliness. When an animal grins, it shows its teeth expressing terror or aggression. When you see a monkey or ape grin on a commercial, sitcom, or movie, there is a trainer behind the camera threatening it.

Human traits which are not seen in animals include worship, guilt, sympathy, and creativity in art and music. It is essential to look at other explanations when considering the behavior of animals. Recently people witnessed a female whale carrying her dead calf for nearly a week. Several newspaper articles were guilty of anthropomorphism by saying that the whale was expressing grief. Many times animals in the wild avoid the scavenging of a dead sibling or offspring by maintaining a vigil over the corpse. That instinctive action assures that the offspring is, in fact, dead, and avoids spreading the disease that killed the dead animal.

I remember a field trip I had in my NSF graduate workshop for science teachers. At an aquarium in Chicago, we watched a demonstration of natural selection. A hungry northern pike was placed in an aquarium with three small fish. One was a wounded and incapacitated minnow. Another was a slightly wounded but otherwise relatively healthy fish of the same species. The third was a healthy well-fed fish. The lesson plan said that the students should predict which of the three fish the pike would eat. Our group of teachers all agreed it would be the incapacitated minnow. For the next 30 minutes, we watched the pike tear up the aquarium trying to get the healthy minnow and avoiding the two wounded fish. We teachers debated as to why that happened, but the aquarium workers said it was frequently the case.

Humans are unique because we are created in the image of God. That allows us to do things that reflect that unique makeup. When we interpret animal behavior in human terms, we are guilty of anthropomorphism.

For more on the data see Discover Magazine, April 2019, page 52 -57.