On July 13, 2018 Julia Hanna and Aya Katz continued to interview with Dt. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh that had begun the week before. The topic was language and apes.
Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is more experienced than any other ape language researcher, and 
her breakthroughs have revolutionized the field. Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh has a lifetime of achievements in the field of ape language, working with both chimpanzees and bonobos. She is has generously agreed to share her personal experiences, her observations and her scientific conclusions with us in this interview.
Specific issues covered in this interview include:
- The ability of specific parrots to use human language to share new information.
- The difference between living language and expressions that have been bleached of meaning and are only used as social signals.
- How a parrot can use language spontaneously and not only by rote.
- How a baby develops its self-identity.
- Human rearing and its effect on the cognition of chimpanzees.
- Autistic individuals and defects in mirror neurons.
- The mechanisms and tests employed to determine that an individual is self-aware.
- The mirror test of self-recognition.
- Cognitive differences between monkeys and apes.
- Whether there is more to language than its embodiment in a living being.
- AI translations of two languages into each other using text alone.
- The difference between the structure of language and the exchange of meaning between beings.
- Evolution of homonids revisited and where other apes come into our family tree.
- The many waves of hominid migrations from Africa.
- Maternal mitochondria and its effects on neonatal development.
- The inroads that the discovery of epigenetics has made on classical theories of evolution and natural selection as the driving force.
- The difference between epigenetics and neonatal environment.
- A brief phone appearance by Liz Rubert-Pugh, who is also an ape language researcher.
- The ability of bonobos and chimpanzees to communicate at levels and speeds far beyond the average human.
- How traumatizing it would be for an enculturated ape to be taken from the human environment where he was raised and placed in a sanctuary or zoo.
- The animal rights agenda and how it has been used to confiscate exotics and keep them from breeding in the United States.
- The anti-conservation results of shipping endangered chimpanzees to camps where they are not allowed to procreate.
- The natural relationships between humans and other animals.
- Political correctness in the animal rights movement.
- Why sanctuaries will not allow even young and healthy chimpanzees to breed.
- How child welfare and animal welfare are related, and how the increased number of children removed from the home for non-abusive behavior of parents correlates with animal “rescues”.
- How the internet could be used to allow captive apes to communicate with one another across the globe without leaving home.
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Interview with Julia Hanna and Guest Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
