Essay On Non Human Primates

Humans are an extremely curious animal and are always trying to discover what capabilities other animals possess, whether the capabilities are the same or entirely different than humans the curiosity still exists. Human beings study and observe animals in the hopes of learning more about them, and sometimes in hopes of learning more about human beings of now or human beings of the past. People often study non-human primates just to compare their levels and types of intelligence to that of humans, such as looking to discover if they have or can learn communication and language that is comparable to that of human language. Knowing whether another grouping of animals, especially non-human primates, can have a complex language or system of communication
is a large focus of studies from years past until current day in order to discover more about the evolution of language, especially human language. Knowing that humans evolved from primate lines, people seem to focus a lot of research efforts towards these animals. Humans know that people are extremely social animals, but the non-human primates can be quite social themselves; these social needs encourage development and evolution of communication and language to help with survival needs. If social interaction is essential to better survival of an animal, then the need for social communication is at a high priority evolutionarily speaking.
So an important thing to distinguish when examining ability of non-human primates with communication or language is the actual defined difference between language and communication, and exactly where the definite line of distinction might be separating the two, if there even is a line to be considered when looking at so many different animals. Non-human primates have been studied and observed for both communication and language capabilities and distinction is often necessary to understand what has been discovered and what can be discovered. Many researchers of non-human primates argue that they cannot and do not have the capability of language, while others believe that non-human primates do have language, or can be taught forms of language by humans. Some researchers, that believe that non-human primates do have language or can be taught language, realize that it may not be the same level of complexity as that of human language as a whole but that it is a simple but true language form nonetheless. The reality is the definition of language and communication are what truly can determine if research can show non-human primates having language and or the ability of learning human language when trained, so each research can have potentially a different
definition.