In July, moviegoers flocked to the theaters to see War for the Planet of the Apes, in which an army of retrovirus-modified primates is waging a war against humanity. Chimpanzees on horseback, gorillas with submachine guns, scientists orangutans - all of these are undoubtedly well suited for the show. But could something like this ever happen in real life?
In Pierre Boulle's novel Planet of the Apes (1963), which served as the basis for this film, astronaut Ulysses Meru is stuck on a terrible planet ruled by gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees, copying the language, culture and technologies of their former masters - humans. Meanwhile, people have degenerated into brutal, primitive savages.
Much of the ominous realism of Planet of the Apes is explained by Boole's amazing attention to scientific detail and his knowledge of the work on animal behavior published up to that time. His book builds on the still popular idea that some animals, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, have an advanced but secret communication system that humans are completely unable to understand. Many people prefer to think that all these "arrogant" scientists who claim that animals cannot speak are simply unable to decipher animal signals.
But Boulle's book is undoubtedly a figment of fiction, because here on Earth, monkeys could never actually assimilate human culture solely by imitating it. In reality, a complex culture requires basic biological abilities that are developed through a long process of evolution. Chimpanzees simply do not have the vocal control and physiology necessary to speak.
In addition, modern monkeys cannot be made highly intelligent even with the help of brain-expanding drugs. And although microbes can change behavior (for example, the rabies virus makes the behavior of its owners aggressive), they cannot give animals the ability to speak.
We know this because communication between animals has been actively explored for over a century, and because scientific experimentation does not even provide a hint of truly complex communication abilities in animals. For example, in the 1940s, scientists decided to raise a chimpanzee named Vicki in their home. But Vicki learned only four words - "mom", "dad", "cup" (cup) and "up" (up). This was more than in the previous experiment, when the chimpanzee grew up with a human cub. This experiment had to be terminated after the chimpanzee was unable to learn a single word, but the child began to imitate the sounds of the chimpanzee.
In the decades that followed, much more enthusiasm was given to teaching monkeys to sign language. However, virtually all linguists agree that the monkeys in these experiments did not demonstrate language proficiency. They could remember the meaning of the signs, but they could not learn the rules of grammar.
The fact that the statements of the "talking" monkeys were extremely self-centered speaks volumes. When monkeys have the means to conduct a conversation, their communication is limited to expressing desires, such as "give me food." The longest recorded saying of a "talking" monkey - a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpski - was, "Give me an orange, give me an orange, I eat an orange, give me an orange, give me you." It turned out that chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas are not the most interesting interlocutors.
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On the contrary, just a few months after pronouncing the first word, two-year-old children are able to build complex, grammatically correct and diverse in topics sentences, consisting of verbs, nouns, prepositions and definitions. They are capable of this because the human brain has evolved to understand and reproduce speech.
Many scholars believe that speech was born from the use of signs with different meanings. Our ancestors were immersed in a world rich in symbols, and this led to an evolutionary response that fueled the development of neural structures that allow us to effectively manipulate symbols. Syntax in the human language has become possible today due to the fact that our ancestors used symbolic proto-languages for a long time. Genes and culture have evolved together, reorganizing the human brain.
All of this applies equally to military affairs, which is not just aggression on a large scale. During war, complex human institutions dictate strict codes of conduct and individual roles that facilitate cooperation. Research suggests that this level of cooperation cannot occur in animals that lack complex cultures and characteristics such as institutionalized punishment and socially sanctioned retribution.
Many of these norms are not entirely obvious, which means that they must be instilled, as a rule, during the period of growing up. But even when it comes to monkeys who are skilled imitators, we have no convincing evidence that they actively teach behavior. If the monkeys cooperate, it usually happens to help relatives. Meanwhile, the scale of human cooperation, which involves a huge number of unconnected people willing to work together, is unprecedentedly large, because this cooperation is based on learned and socially transmitted norms.
There is now ample evidence that the cultural activities of our ancestors altered the human brain through natural selection, which then continued to expand our cultural capabilities even further in repeated cycles. For example, in the early Neolithic, people began to drink milk, after which they underwent powerful selection, in which genes that could break down energy-rich lactose were won. This genetic-cultural co-evolution explains why many of us, with herding ancestors, do not suffer from lactose intolerance.
Unsurprisingly, Boole put such a strong emphasis on imitation. Humans are the descendants of a long line of imitators who mimicked each other's fear responses to recognize predators and avoid danger. Today, this ability manifests itself in empathy and other forms of emotional empathy that have made watching movies so much. Without these abilities, we would all watch films like sociopaths, equally indifferent to killing and kissing.
It was through imitation that our ancestors learned to butcher meat, light a fire, make digging tools, spears and fishhooks. These and countless other skills have made us perfectly adapted to understanding the movements of others and to replicating those movements by our muscles, tendons and joints. Eons have passed, and today, movie stars display the same abilities, mimicking the movements of other primates with an accuracy that no other animal species can achieve.
Human culture, which has evolved over millennia, is not something that another species of animal can easily adopt. We can be completely calm that there will be no war between primates on Earth. For it to begin, other animal species must go through an equally lengthy process of evolution. And the only monkey that actually wages wars on this planet, it seems, is ready to do everything to prevent this from happening.
Kevin Laland