Hi Guys. Recently I read this intriguing piece in a newspaper.
" A young boy is close to being more bird than human because he was never spoken to, while living in an almost aviary. The 7 year old Russian boy lived with his mother in a 2-room apartment full of cages and droppings. She had domestic and wild birds in cages. His mother neither beat him nor left him without food. She just never talked to him. It was all the birds that communicated with the boy and taught him 'bird language'. A social worker, who 'rescued' the child from his home, said "When you start talking to him, he chirps". His mother signed a bond to release him last week. The boy now lives in an asylum, but will soon be transferred to a center for psychological studies."
To me it raises questions such as :
1. Has the boy really been "rescued", or is he in for much more misery as a guniea pig of experiments? (An ethical question???)
2. Is it possible that birds have a language? Could it be learnt by humans as is a pointer from the report?
3. How would the boy express his emotions? Would we be able to interpret or understand them? If we do, then would it give us a better understanding of the bird world?
Let me know ! I invite everyone to join in and start writing.
4 comments:
well, techinically, the poor boy was going through some inhumane conditions, and was unable to live in the same luxuries as normal human beings do. But the other side- he does'nt know nay life apart from the one he lived ie. The life of being surrounded with birds. True, none of us would enjoy the life he had, as none of us would like to give up our life of human interaction with birds (Birds? in the city the only bird i've seen is a crow!)This reminds me of Brave New World, where the 'caveman' was 'rescued' (For all those who haven't read the book, READ IT!!!! Its brilliant!)
Addressing the second part of the first question, that's ethics indeed. From a purely scientific point of view, why not? This is an ideal specimen for scientific experimentation, it will be an incredibly unique opportunity for groundbreaking scientific research gone waste. Then again, will the boy know what's happening to him? He's been disrupted from his natural environment and dropped into that of humans..will he truly be happier than what he was in the ? Does he know that he his a guinea pig and feel bad (i dont think so)how will we know coz we won't be able to understand him? Does his happiness really matter? Or is it more important that the possibility of groundbreaking research ...This can be a long argument, on the individual over society, individual over knowledge. Do people really care if others are happy (apart from their loved ones) or is
Why can't birds have language? I think its very possible. How else would the communicate? By language, i mean a mean of communication, a method to communication. Humans are such finely developed/highly evolved creatures, with a huge brain to body ratio, that we have the ability to think to a great degree, and find connections in this abstract sea of knowledge, and also to express our thoughts in a highly intricate manner. (This is debatable, but...)Birds on the other hand, are primitive creatures. So they may not have as an intricate and developed a language as us, but nevertheless, they do have language. Their language may be something completely different from what we know! all (human)languages have a some things in common, the subject, verb and object with tenses. Animals probably don't have that..(not in the literal sense) they probably have more primitive ways of communicating.
can we learn it? hmm, why not? if we spend enough time in their company, we can probably pick it up. On the other hand, how do we know/ are confident that the boy was successful in communicating with the birds. He probably succeeded in picking up the rudimentary, and been able to imitate them..but is there/can there be any evidence to show that he was successful in his communication?or 'intricate communication' if animals have anything like that..
I believe that emotions are something that are primarily conveyed through body language- u can instantly notice an animal who's happy or sad (ie. a dog wagging his tail, a cat crouching) These are instincts, pretty primitive. I've mentioned in one on my reflections that emotions are evolutionary, the more evolved an animal, the more complex his/her emotions. But as we've established in class, we do have those 6 primary emotions, and those can be expressed by body language. Now, the boy may feel certain human emotions (is there anything like a human emotion that only applies to humans?)and be unable to express them, as bird language, being primitive doesn't have that ability (we humans often find difficulty in expressing our own emotions in our very own cleverly devised language(s))We probably might be able to bend our intelligence and find a way to interpret them. The question boils down to this- are we born with emotions, are emotions in our DNA, specie specific, with common emotions for certain species, or are our emotions defined by our environment and the interaction that we have?
Firstly, I think I agree with Karina when she says that the boy clearly had no concept of ordinary life, and so could not possibly know what he was missing. I therefore feel that he was not really in an inhuman condition whatsoever, quite unlike what we would be feeling in a similar situation, given our experiences and comfort levels. Whether or not he has been rescued, on the other hand, depends entirely on how he is being treated in his 'new home'. Simply assuming that because he has lived his entire life in a particular scenario or condition he is incapable of adapting to a new, possibly more pleasant one would be foolish. If the asylum and/or the cps give him more luxuries and comforts of the type he may expect, or perhaps even pleasantly surprising him, he might come to prefer his new home to his old one, and might even revel in the interactions with fellow humans.
Secondly. Birdspeak. Ah, well. I find that a realm more for science fiction, and childrens science fiction at that, than anything to actually be taken seriously. Again, no information is given about the various species of birds held in the aviary. With birds of different species, well, they are different species, and it would not be scientifically logical to assume that anything more than the most basic forms of communication exist between them. There is, of course, documented means of communication between birds of the same species (mating calls and the like) and also of different species (like the Hollywood 'monkey calls' where animals call out in panic to warn others of an approaching predator) - as noted, these are rather rudimentary. Birds of the same species might of course have forms of communication unkown to us, but it is highly unlikely that they would be as developed as we might imagine them to be, perhaps being used to crudely convey emotions or feelings such as fear, hunger, satisfaction(?) or, as noted above, love (or lust, as one sees it). The boys chirping simply seems to me to be an attempt to imitate the only noise he hears from living beings, and the fact that this might conceivably excite the birds further would have added impetus to his efforts. I doubt that birds would actually have a language worth learning, especially given their behavioral patterns in reaction to the 'chirping' and the like.
Thirdly, emotions and their expression have been EXHAUSTIVELY discussed in our classes, and on multiple occasions we have triumphantly reached the conclusion that emotions have many outlets, including facial expression, body language, and tone, and as such, the boys lack of language skills would hardly serve to inhibit him from expressing the more rudimentary forms of these. Again, as with the birdspeak point, it is unlikely that he would have had any experience with, and so would know how to, express deeper emotions, bring out their depth in any way that could be described as anything more than crude, or attempt to explain or justify them. Interpretation would thus be possible, but not on the same magnitude as is possible and indeed usual with conventional humans. As t=for his expression of emotions giving us a better understanding of the bird world, well, he is at the end of the day human, and as we did conclude, emotions are, as Karina aptly put it, 'in our DNA' i.e. we are hard wired to feel a certain way in a given situation and express it also in a particular manner. I doubt examination of expression of human emotions would shed much light on how birds emote. There is no doubt that the way we feel is affected by our past experiences, but it is primarily the way we react to those past experiences that shapes us, not the occurrence itself. Thus humans will always have a different mentality from birds.
i thought karinas post made me feel like an idiot
was like a full commentary or something
looking back on it, i didnt do too bad in comparison hopefully
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