• treadful@lemmy.zip
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    24 days ago

    I have no idea if they’re curious about the world around them. But that’s also not the question at hand.

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      23 days ago

      It is the question at hand. It’s a question about the mental process of animals

      The question isn’t are they curious - we know they are. The question is why they don’t ask humans questions when you teach them how to speak

      The answer is - it’s because you’re not speaking gorilla, the gorilla is learning a foreign language, which it learned by being motivated by food.

      Animal languages have a different grammar to human languages. When they ask questions, they often do it by making statements to be agreed with or corrected. They might even disagree, and assert the statement again in reply

      You have to meet animals halfway… Well, really like 10% of the way since they’re the ones learning to speak to us in our languages