Chapter 1
The science of communication
Imagine, if you will, that you are a chimp. You are monkeying around in Tanzania, when suddenly you come across a tasty-smelling fruit that’s entirely new to you, and you can’t seem to get the nut open to access the juicy flesh inside. One of your troop, however, knows what to do, and cracks and twists the fruit in such a way that opens it.
You try to do the same thing and it doesn’t work straight away; what do you do? Do you: (a) keep trying to open it the way your chimp friend did; or (b) give up on that and try to figure it out yourself?
As a human, you probably went with option (a), following the lead of a peer; an actual chimp, meanwhile, would have gone with option (b).
Vicky Horner and Andrew Whiten ...
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