WASHINGTON (AP) — Dan the baboon sits in front of a computer screen. The letters BRRU pop up. With a quick and almost dismissive tap, the monkey signals it’s not a word. Correct. Next comes, ITCS. Again, not a word. Finally KITE comes up.
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He pauses and hits a green oval to show it’s a word. In the space of just a few seconds, Dan has demonstrated a mastery of what some experts say is a form of pre-reading and walks away rewarded with a treat of dried wheat.
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Dan is part of new research that shows baboons are able to pick up the first step in reading — identifying recurring patterns and determining which four-letter combinations are words and which are just gobbledygook…
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In 300,000 tests, the six baboons distinguished between real and fake words about three-out-of-four times, according to the study published in Thursday’s journal Science.
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The 4-year-old Dan, the star of the bunch and about the equivalent age of a human teenager, got 80 percent of the words right and learned 308 four-letter words…
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Key to the success of the experiment was a change in the testing technique, the researchers said. The baboons weren’t put in the computer stations and forced to take the test. Instead, they could choose when they wanted to work, going to one of the 10 computer booths at any time, even in the middle of the night.
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The most ambitious baboons test 3,000 times a day; the laziest only 400.
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JoyfulA
Not the phonics program, huh?
MikeJ
UNLIMITED CORPORATE BANANAS!
Wag
@JoyfulA:
No, it sounds like a whole language program to me
Neil
Planet of the apes, people. PLANET OF THE APES.
Egg Berry
Dan the Baboon, code name V.E.R.I.T.A.S.
amk
eugenics!!!
Jebediah
@MikeJ:
You forgot to bold that.
UNLIMITED BANANAS!
Scared yet, humantards?
28 Percent
What a perfectly cromulent study!
Joseph Nobles
This is cool. Maybe we could get some research into the conservative ability to pre-feel as well.
bjacques
Bookmark it, hominid libtards!
Feeling very much like a lazy baboon today.
amk
Monkeys succeed while their brethren and their computers fail.
Chris Wolf
Only 80%? Moran.
amk
83% of donations to @elizabethforma were $50 or less. scott brown wont give out that breakdown.
Egg Berry
there’s a four-letter word joke in there, but i’m not caffeinated enough to make it.
The Ancient Randonneur
New recruits for the Red State Strike Force! And just a tad more literate …
kdaug
Always.
c u n d gulag
If the rewards are Cheeto’s and Mountain Dew, soon, we’ll have REAL baboons trolling Liberal sites on the internet.
My guess, since they’re capable of learning things, is that they’ll evolve faster than the Conservative human trolls.
WereBear
As I always point out when there is compelling evidence of non-human species showing intelligence, and thought, and emotions, and preferences; where do you think ours comes from?
cmorenc
If a thousand baboons were given a thousand typewriters and a near-immortally long amount of time, how soon would one of them re-type Atlas Shrugged? A lot sooner than one of them would re-type Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Linda Featheringill
We all continue to evolve. And after we humans have done ourselves in, the next group will have their day in the sun.
The snow monkeys in Japan, the ones that soak in the hot springs, those guys . . .
. . . frequently remind me of what I think primitive modern man was like.
Egg Berry
@Linda Featheringill:
some of us. the conservatives seem to be devolving.
kdaug
@Egg Berry:
Conserve.
Progress.
Omnes Omnibus
Baboons groom.
El Cid
If they’s all this evyolushun, how come ey’s still baboons? And if ey kin read, y’all next gonna be demanding baboon marriage?
Brandon
Baboons with flexible work arrangements? When will my employers learn ‘face time’ is unimportant?
Omnes Omnibus
@Brandon:
When you establish dominance within the troop and mandate new policies. I advise baring your teeth in an aggressive manner to challenge those above you on the corporate ladder.
kdaug
@El Cid:
Yes. Your baboon wife will arrive at your doorstep tomorrow.
Do watch your fingers. She’s a bit “bitey”.
But we trust you’ll be fine.
Schlemizel
I was going to draw a conclusion about a certain liar that named itself truth here at BJ but then I realized I would be insulting baboons the world over and they have done nothing to deserve the scorn that troll has earned.
Roger Moore
@The Ancient Randonneur:
I’m guessing they’re way too sensitive and empathetic to work for Red State.
Napoleon
@Omnes Omnibus:
. . . and fling poo.
Omnes Omnibus
@Napoleon: That goes without saying.
El Cid
From the Department of Apparent Badass, Re-Election Assistance Division:
Maybe next time NJ elects a governor, instead of Loudmouth McTunnelthief, they can elect Spider-Man.
newsouthzach
Christ, I only know a couple dozen of the damn things…
Ash Can
@cmorenc:
“Given a week or two” is more like it. After all, they recite the thing cover-to-cover daily, especially at feeding time.
El Cid
Don’t know why it’s in moderation, but I attempted to note Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker just rescued his neighbors from their burning home.
El Cid
Test?
El Cid
Fuck it.
kdaug
@El Cid:
Well, yes, that was actually the point.
At least once daily is required in the contract, but we would rather prefer twice. (There’s a built-in bonus if you can show evidence of three times or more per day)!
Just do watch the fingers.
El Cid
Apparently links are forbidden, but Newark NJ Democratic mayor Cory Booker rescued a neighbor’s daughter from the flames and smoke of their home, fighting off his security detail to do so. Just Google it.
El Cid
Oh, that’s what it is — I can’t mention the name of the mayor of Newark because it sounds like a game involving those flat things which come in stacks of 52. Okay, so that mayor rescued people from a really hot building where there was like fire and stuff.
RossInDetroit
Patterning in language is interesting. I’ve been reading Gleick’s book The Information and there’s a long section about redundancy and entropy in English. About 80% of the information in written English is redundant. You don’t need ‘u’ after ‘q’ and no information is lost if you omit it so it’s redundant. Certain letter patterns appear very frequently and many appear not at all. I’m not surprised that a baboon could learn this by trial and error.
Jay C
So how long do you think it will be before Dan starts his own blog?
He’s already ahead of a LOT of right-wingers I can think of….
Forum Transmitted Disease
Replace our government with baboons. They obviously are more interested in reading and could not possibly do a worse job.
maya
Yeah, but can they spell morans?
daveX99
How much time do these apes spend on twitter?
Jennifer
Just what we need – a bunch of cursing baboons.
Don’t we have enough of those already?
On the bright side, since CNN has been in a bit of a panic after realizing that even the hire of Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch have not won them majority share with really dumb motherfuckers, now they’ll have another hiring option. Though it’s really unfair to the baboons for CNN to assume that they are less intelligent than Erickson or Loesch.
jprfrog
I second #44. I think that were some of these primates serve in state legislatures (e. g. Alabama, Arizona) things would improve there.
RossInDetroit
This is the conservative blogger process distilled to its essence:
1) see words
2) press buttons
3) get fed
Notice that comprehension is not required.
JGabriel
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Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer:
I object to this biased and demeaning characterization of the the monkey who doesn’t like as “lazy”!
Perhaps he’s the kind of monkey who would rather dig for insects and forage for bananas, while the monkey who likes tests might be the kind who would just sit around reading and surfing the internet all day!
Elitist researcher snobs!
.
JGabriel
@RossInDetroit:
Yeah, smarty-pants? Try spelling ‘queue’ without a ‘u’ after ‘q’. You can’t have a ‘queue’ without ‘u’; all you’re left with is ‘qee’.
And ‘quick’ without ‘u’ is just a ‘qick’.
.
RossInDetroit
@JGabriel:
Yeah, conclusion not supported by findings. Maybe the under-performing monkey has a wheat allergy and doesn’t like the treats.
RossInDetroit
@JGabriel:
To be clear, when you have a letter pair doing the job of one letter, there’s redundancy. Omitting ‘u’ from ‘qu’ doesn’t work in every case. But in every case some other single letter substitution would work, and would contain the same information with less bits. It’s a theory about the information content in written English and not an exact compression algorithm.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
@WereBear:
The all-powerful Great Sky Monkey, naturally.
gaz
He learned 308 four-letter-words?
He’d be the toast of my dinner parties =)
muddy
Ambition or greed? That is the question. Or are they really the same thing?