Yes, we can affirm this. In the same way that we explain to everyone who question us: why would not be possible that living beings with a quite similar DNA, a developed brain, human anatomy and body physiology and a blood system suitable with ours one day will be able to talk and develop a proper language – as it happens with chimpanzee Cesar at the movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” -, not to mention what they have already, sign and gestures language and attitudes?

We reported to a Brazilian journalist of Veja magazine, who wrote an excellent article about the intelligence of great apes, inspired by the movie, a typical case of how a chimpanzee can be smart. Guga, our first chimpanzee, whom we have been raising since he was three-month old and with whom I and my family have strong bonds, negotiated, a few days before, the keys of lockers he had “stolen” for a bottle of Coke, which he shared with his enclosure companions.

We are privileged observers of the “chimpanzee world” at GAP Sanctuary in Sorocaba, where we have 53 individuals. We live with them for more than 12 years and observe them closely, maybe like no one in the world had the opportunity to do with a so heterogeneous group.

Each chimpanzee is different from each other, like humans are. They have their own characteristics, distinct reactions and diverse abilities. They are captivity chimpanzees, some have suffered a lot, both physical and emotionally – due to human violence -, and are overtaking many of their traumas and manage to survive and to relate with their equals, and with the humans who take care and love them.

A few million years ago, Homo sapiens was like a chimpanzee. The communication was through gestures, signs, attitudes and sounds and there was no ability of articulating words, although his origin dates of 2 o 4 million years. One day a “human Cesar”, who suffered a mutation in the gene that avoid him to talk, appeared and began to convert sounds in words. His sons and grandsons evolved more until the ability of talking was consolidated and became permanent.

If this happened to Homo sapiens, why can it not happen to Homo troglodytes? If the son of bonobo Kanzi, Teco, did not need previous training, as his father, to use the computer and learned this when he was two, it would not be impossible to think that Kanzi or Teco’s grandsons can try and managed to abandoned the communication through the computer and start to talk. Nothing can impede this to happen. It is the story of evolution that proves it. Not the mention genetic engineering, which will enable us to accelerate this process. Will somebody try to do it? Probably… If it was possible to make blind people to see, deaf people to listen, why would we not be able to make someone unable to speak to articulate words?

In my dreams of the fight for the recognition of basic rights of chimpanzees and great apes in our society, an idea never abandoned me: that there will be a day that a “Cesar” will defend his equals, with words and action, from the mistreating committed against their primitive brothers by humans. They will talk and will be listened!

 
Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International