Apes With Apps

Apes With Apps. Using tablets and customized keyboards, bonobos (apes) can become great communicators

Have you ever watched a toddler play with an iPhone? Most likely, the child was completely captivated and surprisingly adept at manipulating the tiny icons. Two-year-old Teco is no different. Sitting with his Motorola Xoom tablet, he’s rapt, his dark eyes fixed on the images, fingers pecking away at the touch screen. He can’t speak, but with the aid of the tablet app I created for him, he’s building a vocabulary that will likely total several thousand words. What’s more, he’ll be able to string those words together into simple sentences and ask questions, tell jokes, and carry on conversations. Such talents wouldn’t seem exceptional in a human child, but Teco is an ape—a bonobo, to be precise . To the uninitiated, bonobos look very much like chimpanzees , but they are in fact a separate species with distinct physical and behavioral traits. More collaborative and sociable t...

Full article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/apes-with-app...