A chimpanzee with human intelligence with genetic engineerin

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Would it be possible to create a chimpanzee with human intelligence with genetic engineering?

Were you inspired by this?:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc3ykZnTfxk[/youtube]

I would say it would be possible to g.e. a chimp to be MORE intelligent, however human intelligence is a result of our peculiar evolutionary path, so I think this would be two complex to artificially replicate.

In theory, yes. In fact, the technology is very far away from producing such a result.

ruveyn

I don't think it would be desirable on ethical grounds. If a chimp had human sentience would it be fair to say that the chimp has acquired status equal to humans?

Would it not be cruel to a chimp to have human intelligence but be trapped in a chimps body, unable to speak or articulate itself in a human manner while being alienated from its own species?

Moreover whats the point? What would we gain?

Why?

a better question is can a chimp speak English if we gave it vocal chord surgery?

Not really. Chimps are not as good as we are in the abstract though department.

ruveyn

that doesnt have anything to do with abstract thought. chimps are able to understand sign language the only reason they cant speak is bc of their vocal chords.

Its much more complex than that.

To produce our speech requires precise control of muscles all over the thoraxic cavity. The vocal chords only modify the air passing through them...but the air itself has to be expelled at X amount per second with X pressure to make the words. That means lots of brain-muscle control which chimps do not have.

For example, chimps cannot hold their breath. At all. They cannot dive underwater. They drown. Their breathing is autonomic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q916J6rzqno

This chimp was taught to hold his nose with his hand and squeeze to be able to go underwater. Yet you can hear it audibly gasp and cough when he surfaces..he cant hold his breath or expel air in a strong, short burst to clear any water in his airways. Chimps simply do not have that precision muscle control in their respiratory-muscle control system.

Check out the concept of biological uplift.

To make a chimp as smart as a human, they'd have to have a much larger cranium and a developed prefrontal cortex. You'd also need to add an enlarged language processing center in the brain. Seeing as these are the three main things that are different between chimps and humans, you're basically just re-creating a human.

That being said, a chimp's visual short-termn memory is far superior to our own. Memory is not the same as intelligence, but still worth noting.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJAH4ZJBiN8[/youtube]

Science is so interesting. What I like about that video with the chimps is that he probably thinks in pictures like most of us Aspie's do. We also rely greatly on memory.

However, one question that remains in my mind as to whether a chimp can lock a list of vocabulary words into its brain and them learn to use a keyboard and put the words together. They already proved with Coco the gorilla and Chantek the orang that they could use sign language and also lie. So, I am wondering if you could teach a primate to use a computer keyboard to get a primate to tell you what they are thinking. However, what training could you use for that? Also, would also also include a bigger brain?

what if we made a chimp as smart as a human allowing it to have the breathing control previously mentioned, and we also give it vocal chord surgery?

lie?

Bonobos (a different kind of chimp) understand spoken human language at the level of a 4 year old human. That is quite impressive. They can also communicate back with a form of sign language just like Koko.

Keyboard...no. That would require a highly complex understanding of symbols (letters are symbols) which is processed by the frontal cortex...of which chimps have an appalling small amount of. They can handle simple image->real object interaction like ball, water, cloud, river, etc.. but not breaking the word apart into letters and using a 24+ letter alphabet to combine into thousands of words.

Sign language used by apes/chimps for example is representative. One gesture = one thing or sensation (cold, hot,pain,etc). You wont see them using the human sign language to construct letter by letter words with hand signals unless its rote taught to them as a sequence representing a thing/feeling.