Red Ruffed Lemur: Learning, Alice, Contact Improv to Bliss

What can we learn about learning from articulating anthropological interpretations of learning, with knowledge about learning in other primates, from primate research? What might we generalize?

For example, see Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's TED Talk: Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man:

~ ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

Learning is a fascinating, primate phenomenon. In humans it allows for so much change, neurally or neurophysiologically, in the course of a lifetime. In other primates, it makes possible new skills, among other things.

Here's an example of learned behavior: Orangutan Hunting Fish with a Spear

And linguistically?

One generalization: chimpanzees, gorillas, (and probably orangutans), can learn sign language, and, probably, icons on computers, and humans can learn non-mother tongue languages.


So, bringing a focus on behavior together with a focus on language might yield new knowledge to build on existing fascinating knowledge and interpretations to date.

Why not engage bonobo-wiki-virtual-world-graphy as a new method to investigate further?

Or higher-primate-wiki-virtual-world-graphy?


~

{Nice photo: Red Ruffed Lemur ~ http://el.trekearth.com/gallery/photo465455.htm}


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While walking in the Haight-Ashbury today, I saw Alice from Wonderland, in a beautiful white and blue dress coming up the street. Behind her was a white rabbit who was handing out postage stamps. Sitting very lightly at the end of a leafy, tree branch in lotus pose was the Mad Hatter, not the Cheshire Cat, saying "lick the stamps, put them on leaves, and post them to the sun." So I did.

I imagine such possibilities might have been richly explored in the 1960s and 70s in the Haight, but are less 'in the air' these days.


An anthropology of imagination?


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Contact Improv in the evening ... I think it's the movement combined with the touch which are so liberating, but how to elicit 'full on' bliss, when and as one wants it, isn't yet obvious to me, especially improvisationally.