Did any trained animal ever really learn to speak? In my last animation, experts trained animal communication's biggest celebrities. Here the animal stars undergo scrutiny and one conference tanks hopes for future nonhuman linguistic marvels.

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~ Shortly and sweetly ~

In part 2 we learned about Alex the parrot, Kanzi the bonobo, Nim the chimpanzee, Hans the horse and other impressive signers and symbolizers. This time, I animate three anecdotes to draw a line from the "Clever Hans Effect" in the early 1900s through a trained chimpanzee and to a conference blowup in the later 20th century. In the end, this line ends at debunkings, disinterest and lack of funding for training talking animals. From there, we anticipate the rest of my Grammanimals series. Turn the camera away from "lab" grammars and toward "wild" grammars. In parts 4 to 8, we'll ask if any of the communication systems used by animals in their own homes contain anything like human grammar.

Revisit part 2 to get an overview of the systems scrutinized here. I briefly recap the details on my handwritten "critter sheets", but we spend much more time focused on them in the last video and in my sources document linked below.

~ Resources ~

Art, animation and music by me. I wrote a sources document to back up claims and to give credit for all images, fonts and sounds:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t...

Within that document I share links to groups focused on animals, their habitats and the people who care for them. There's a narrative tiein that will work well by the end of the series, but for now I'll just mention and link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t...