Chimpanzees Get Video Conferencing Equipment For Online Communication Experiment

 A team of researchers will give chimpanzees around the world video-conferencing equipment to study how they adapt to social technology. Supported by singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel, the study aims to study and compare apes' online communication tactics versus that of their more advanced cousins, humans.

A chimpanzee group at the 65-acre Monkey World in Dorset, UK, will receive the first batch of equipment. When the Monkey World group has adapted to the video-conferencing equipment, the research will extend to the African jungle. The plan is to release some of the Monkey World chimpanzees into the jungle and reunite them with their troupe using the video-conferencing equipment.

The researchers hope that the chimpanzees from both areas will recognize and continue to communicate with one another using the video-conferencing equipment, which will be installed in the trees and protected with a glass partition. The chimpanzee social experiment will be transformed into documentaries in partnership with the Latymer Upper School in London, where Gabriel's son, Isaac, is currently a student.

If the chimpanzee social experiment proves successful, the researchers plans to extend the study to dolphins, elephants and various animal species. When the research team has analyzed how the animals communicate using video conference, the next step is to use the findings and the technology to enable humans to communicate with animals better.

"The idea is to extend a big video network that already exists in labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology so that different species including our own have a chance to communicate," said Gabriel who is confident that the chimpanzees who live in Monkey World will use the video-conferencing equipment to talk to each other.

Gabriel is collaborating with a team of technology pioneers and scientists for the project. One of them is Vint Cerf who belonged to the team of engineers who developed one of mankind's most beloved discovery, the Internet. Gabriel is also working with Professor Neil Gershenfeld from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gabriel previously worked with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh in an experiment where they tried to make music with bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees. At first, the bonobos kept bashing the keyboards with their first but later learned to use two fingers and picked out notes. Gabriel noted how amazing it was that the bonobos seemed better at understanding the human language than vice versa.