back to article Brain-delving boffins in key monkey-butler breakthrough

In a development with potentially immense consequences in the important area of monkey* butlers, boffins have identified the crucial genetic differences which permit humans to employ speech and deny this ability to chimpanzees, our closest genetic cousins. According to Dr Daniel Geschwind of the David Geffen School of Medicine …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Neither species harmed??

    I think you are sorely mistaken!

    For the noble simian to be categorized and marginalized by godless science is cruelty at best and the sickening touch of reasoned bigotry at worst!

    To be ape is not defect! The family primate will not be turned upon itself by the contrived elitism of the verbalisers!

    Let us not be judged by the random chance of our genetic makeup. Let us not use the truncated alphabet of our twisted protein-helixes to shuffle and sort ourselves into the miserable state where all are diminished - including those who seek to advance their own cause at the expense of others.

    Only when we stop erecting fences between us can brother ape and brother man stand together as simply "brother"!

    Infect yourselves with rage at the humanists and bio-rationalists!

  2. Lloyd
    WTF?

    The what?

    The David Geffen School of Medicine? Is that the one next to the Harvey Weinstein University of Plumbing? Or the one beside The Walt Disney Hanukkah Emporium?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ AC 12:29 GMT

    Going for the comment spot ? or just an idiot ?

  4. Deckchair

    is required

    @AC 12:29. Perhaps you should get your FOXP2 gene tested.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    A warning from history

    I can see it now.

    Meddling scientists, playing god with things that ought not to be in the ken of man, add the human FOXP2 gene to chimpanzees, gifting them language.

    A crack squad of talking apes then break out of a high seccurity stockade and escape in to the Los Angeles underground, working as mercenaries for hire and specialising in audacious jewel thefts. The proceeds frm these heists go towards the founding of the world's first talking chimp colony, and campaigns for equal rights.

    Two decades later, history is made when the first Pan sapiens is elected as US President, after running a campaign based around environmental policies and the theme of "we can't do a worse job that the lot you've already had".

    Thirty minutes after all the talking chimps seal themselves into an underground shelter stocked with bananas, the missiles start to launch.

    Two thousand years later, Charlton Heston lands on the surface of a familiar-looking planet...

  6. g e

    Uh-oh

    Let's hope, having already called a military system 'Skynet' these particular boffins don't call the first two talking chimps Galen & Zera ....

    Tempt ye not the fates!

    @ AC 'Neither Species Harmed??' ...

    *W*T*F* ?????????

  7. Chris 2

    @AC no.1

    Fuck THAT!

    I'd like a monkey butler with four arms and the standard head/laser package NOW, please. Get to work, sciency-types!

  8. Robert Hill
    Welcome

    I for one welcome...

    our new talking, walking, simian overlords...

    Only mankind could engineer his own evolutionary replacement - perhaps not once (computer AI) but twice (simians with the capability to communicate and evolve their own culture). When we apply such tinkering to our own development people think of swastikas and scream eugenics. When we do it to machines and simians we are merely researching...

  9. Hollerith 1

    Let's hope we never get them to talk

    Because the first thing they'll ask is why, even though we can see they have higher cognitive and emotional capabilities, we continued to 'experiment' on chimps both invasively and simply by caging them and running them through behaviour tests.

  10. lglethal Silver badge
    Boffin

    Help for autism i understand...

    but how could this help Schizophrenia?

    The (very limited i admit) contact i have had with Schizophrenic people has shown them to be normal people most of the time, complete with normal speech patterns. It seems to be there hearing (or more specifically there ability to hear things which arent there) every now and then which is the problem.

    So helping there ability to speak is going to help them how?

  11. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    @Hollerith 1

    When and if the time comes, that question we'll answer by holding up a banana and they'll say: "Ah yes. We remember now, free bananas. Which electrodes did you want where again?"

  12. Marvin the Martian
    Flame

    David Geffen School?

    I see now where they're planning to get their next generation of singers.

  13. Munchausen's proxy
    Pint

    Oook

    "monkey butler" is a nice phrase, and I understand why "chimp butler" simply doesn't work; may I suggest "pongid butler", or possibly "pongid valet" as a more correct (and less likely to induce the wrath of Librarians) option?

    Or maybe pongid beer-puller?

  14. GumboKing
    Coat

    I can't wait for...

    an infinite number of Talking Monkey Shakespeare Books on CD.

    After they are done typing it, that is.

    "Filthy plagiarists.", Bucky Katt

  15. Ned Ludd
    Stop

    You know where this ends...

    "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like