who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

338spontaneous pant-hoots). This also suggests that inquiring pant-hootsare in fact statements, not questions;(3) Most importantly, enculturated chimpanzees do not use interrogativesin laboratories where they are successfully taught complex forms ofcommunication. Although in laboratories they demonstrate incrediblecognitive abilities, much beyond the level of their free-rangingrelatives, and although they are familiar with interrogative sentences,still they do seem not ask questions. It seems very unlikely thatchimpanzees lose the ability to ask questions in captivity.Questioning-like behavior has been suggested in other primates. David Symmesand Maxeen Biben suggest three criteria to establish the presence of a conversationamong animals: (1) turn taking, (2) directionality of change in acoustic structure, and (3)bidirectionality of information transfer (Todt et all., 1988: vii; Symmes & Biben, 1988:123-32). According to the research of Symmes and Biben, squirrel monkeys’ vocalexchange can be characterized as conversations. Regarding the ability of squirrelmonkeys to ask questions, Symmes and Biben suggested, “animals are seekinginformation by questioning and receiving information from answers” (Symmes & Biben1988:131). I understand it is not easy to be sure what the squirrel monkey are “talking”about, or whether they really ask each other questions, but it seems unlikely to me thatmonkeys can ask questions when more cognitively developed apes do not seem topossess this ability. Bateson and Trevarthan coined a special term “proto-conversation”for the early forms of communicative interaction (Bateson, 1975; Trevarthan, 1979)Therefore, the foregoing evidence suggests that• Our closest living relatives understand human questions and can respondaccordingly on a level of a human child roughly about 2.5 years old (Savage-Rumbaugh,1994);• Chimpanzees in the wild have vocalization that has elements of questioningbehavior (enquiry about the whereabouts of other members of the group, and mostimportantly – the human-like terminal rising question intonation);• According to published results, apes were not able to learn how to ask questionsin the experiments, despite their widely known curiosity.• The reason for this inability could be the genetic limitations of the apes’brain. These limitations do not allow for the mental ability from which apes would learnquestioning, or to inquire about the informational state of other individuals.• Where did the phenomenon of questions camefrom – are there any evolutionary prerequisites for thequestioning behavior?Yes, there are at least two of them. First of all, an evolutionary prerequisite of thequestion phenomenon is curiosity. I think it is safe to declare that a question without