Primate Research Summary

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Summary of the research question and outcome
The research project question was inspired by Dr Francine Patterson, an American animal psychologist who has taught a western lowland gorilla named Koko to communicate through a modified version of American Sign Language. This research is known as the longest ongoing interspecies communication study ever undertaken. From reading about this, questions were formed about how Non-Human primates can effectively communicate to humans. Initial research into this topic, led to an understanding that Great Apes are not physically capable of communicating verbally due to the lack of vocal cords and other human speech organs. Therefore, a number of experts in the field of primatology were contacted and an interview …show more content…
One specific challenge faced, was that much of the information found from online sources was based on opinions, theories, and otherwise subjective material. This made it difficult to come to conclusions based on the content of the sources. This meant that an interview with an expert was required to cross reference and validate the information obtained from the secondary sources. The interview proved to correlate with a high number of sources such as a research paper in particular called Systematic Analysis of the Gestural Communication of Gorillas (Call et al. 2001) this provided good evidence to support the responses from the interview, hence confirming the authenticity of the articles. The main challenge faced throughout the research process was primarily finding a suitable expert to interview in the time frame allocated. It is now apparent that the initial expectations to interview multiple experts in the field of primatology was unrealistic in the time allocated for this project. The priorities of others was not taken into consideration when managing the time for this interview to be undertaken. It is now clear that it takes considerable effort to identify and develop contacts that can be used as interview subjects. This is due to the topic of interspecies communication being in a specialised field. Therefore, there are only a small number of primatologists based in Adelaide. After …show more content…
Although there were challenges throughout the research phase, these were overcome by making productive decisions. There are limitations within the research such as the number of primates studied and also the accessibility to interacting with primate species however these were due to the time frame for completion of the project. If this project was to be completed again, perhaps more research could be done on the entirety of the ape species, therefore completing more interviews and having a larger sample size. Overall, the initial question was answered and a greater understanding of interspecies communication was developed as a result of the
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