Why We Talk and Chimps Don’t | Psychology Today
Why We Talk and Chimps Don’t
As much as I love science, I love science fiction more. Science tells us what is; science fiction tells us what might be. I recently read a unique and revealing science fiction story, “Immersion,” written by U-Cal-Irvine physics professor Gregory Benford. In his story, Benford invents the technophile’s brand of ecotourism, in which visitors to Africa can undertake not a photo safari, but a brain-meld adventure. Benford’s characters Kelly and Leon move into the minds of two chimps, experiencing the sensory world from the perspective of a primate species not their own.
Predictably, the humans find themselves trapped in their hosts, encountering hostile rivals and voracious predators, coping with crisis in chimp fashion-their human mental faculties intact, but constrained. While sex, food, and grooming are infinitely satisfying in chimp minds and bodies, Leon and Kelly find themselves frustrated with their limited abilities to communicate. They invent some sounds and signs to get them through, but they long for language:
