THE DOG THAT TALKED

Evening Star, Issue 18255, 20 April 1923, Page 5

THE DOG THAT TALKED

A SCIENTIST'S EXPERIMENT. Animals could learn to speak a few words, even though they did not understand them, was a theory of Dr Alexander Graham Bell’s, and in his later years he experimented with monkeys, trying to teach them to talk. Monkeys have all the equipment necessary for articulate speech. Their vocal organs, throat, and mouth arc exactly like ours. They could talk perfectly well if they had the wits, says Reno Bache in the Philadelphia ‘ Public Ledger.’ Monkeys are ahead of other animals in intelligence, but their mental outfit doesn’t suffice for the development of anything that can properly he called language. Nevertheless, Dr Bell thought they might he taught to speak, and tho writer explains: Professor Bell’s method in dealing with his monkey pupils was to subject their jaws ami mouths to gentle manipulation while they uttered a whining noise, which expectation of reward in the way of food rendered them willing to produce. In a word, they had first to be taught to whine, and, by the means described, the utterance was made to simulate word sounds. Tins, however, was only to start with. Professor Bell thought it possible that his pupils raiglM in time learn, for the sake of appetising bits, to produce the vocables of their own accord. If that could ho acoompliehed, the phenomenon of a talking monkey would become an accomplished fact, interesting to science as well as to the public —though it was hardly to be imagined that the animal would acquire any notion of tho meaning of the words it spoke. The method of primary' teaching above outlined was applied by Professor Bell more than fifty years ago to the instruction of a Bile dog. Telling the story, not long before his death, ho said: “ When I was a young man, about twentyyears of age, my father had several pupils who crime to him to be cured of stammering. I bepamo much interested in the sizes and shapes of tho mouths of stammerers, and was thereby Jed to wonder whether tho mouth of a dog would bo capable of producing articulate sounds. “ We had a very intelligent Skye terrier, and I found little difficulty in teaching him to growl at command. Before long ho acquired tho habit of growling for food, and would sit up ou his hind legs and growl continuously until 1 gave the order to stop. Then I would reward him with a morsel of food.

“ Next I attempted to manipulate his mouth. Taking his muzzle in my hand, I caused his lips to close and open a number of times in succession while ho growled. In this way he gave utterance to the syllables ‘ rni-ma-rna.’ After some practice I was able to make him say, with perfect distinctness, the word ‘ mamma,' pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. “I then placed my thumb under the lower jaw, between the bones, and, pushing up a number of times in succession, I caused him to pronounce the syllables ‘ ga-ga-ga.’ Bypushing up with my thumb once and then constricting the dog’s muzzle twice in succession, I made him say ‘ ga-mamma ’; and by practice this came in a ludicrous degree to sound like ‘ grandmamma.’ “ The dog, rewarded for each successful performance, became proud of his articulation lessons. By caa-eful manipulation of his muzzle I obtained a sound that passed for ‘ah’; and by finishing off the ‘ah’ with a final ‘oo ’ I got ’ow. The culmination of the dog’s linguistic education was reached when he was able to say in an intelligible manner, ‘How are you, grandmamma V—pronounced ‘ Ow-ah-00, ga-ma-ma.’ “ The fame of the talking dog rapidly spread, and many people came to our house to see the little animal sit up on its hind legs and growl, ‘How are you, grandmamroaP'”