For instance, studies have shown that the age of onset of pointing is correlated with the onset of speech later in life. These early non-verbal communication abilities are an important stage in the development of a variety of cognitive and communicative abilities of human children. From around 12 to 15 months of age, the production of manual gestures emerges these gestures are often directed to objects in the environment and accompanied by alternation of gaze between the referent and social agent. Around 6 months of age, developing children begin to orient and follow human social communicative cues such as gaze and pointing. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Īn important aspect of socio-communicative development in human children is the emergence of both the comprehension and production of pointing. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: This research was supported by NIH grants MH-92923, NS-42867, NS-73134 and HD-60563 to WDH and National Center for Research Resources P51RR165 to YNPRC, which is currently supported by the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs/OD P51OD11132). Received: JAccepted: SeptemPublished: November 20, 2013Ĭopyright: © 2013 Hopkins et al. So I hold that Curious George is an ape, but I'll give the Reys a pass on using the catch-all term "monkey" because it would have been easily understood in the time and place they originally wrote the story of this adorable but trouble-making primate.Citation: Hopkins WD, Russell J, McIntyre J, Leavens DA (2013) Are Chimpanzees Really So Poor at Understanding Imperative Pointing? Some New Data and an Alternative View of Canine and Ape Social Cognition. Given the details of the original Curious George book - his living in trees in Africa, his lack of a tail, his coloring and depiction, his opposable big toes and his inquisitive nature - I like to think of him as a juvenile chimpanzee. However, this species does not look particularly like the way George is illustrated, and it also tends to live in mountainous regions of northern Africa, not jungles. In order to reconcile George as a monkey in today's scientific parlance, he would have to be a Barbary macaque. To be sure, we'd have to pose this rather anachronistic question to the Reys, both now deceased. Unfortunately, this detour into taxonomic history doesn't really tell us whether Curious George is a monkey or an ape. When the Reys wrote Rafi et les Neuf Singes in 1939, then, the French term singes still likely meant "monkey and/or ape," even to relatively educated people. The genus Simia is still in use, though, most notably for the Barbary macaque. It wasn't until 1929 that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature recommended no longer using the taxon Simia because it is "paraphyletic" (meaning: a confusing, catch-all term). In the middle of the 18th century, then, there was no scientific distinction at the superfamily level between apes and monkeys as there is today. (Arguably, it still is today.) The original scientific classification system, created by Carl Linnaeus, includes four genera under the order Primates: Homo (humans), Simia (monkeys and apes), Lemur (lemurs and colugos) and Vespertilio (bats). (Image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons)Īt the time Curious George was created, the term "monkey" was common in general use to describe any number of primates. 1750) showing the genera Homo and Simia under the order.
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