Monkey and Child: The Impacts of Natural Intelligence and Environment on Mental Activity

When I was a child, I was skeptical about what makes human behavior different from the animal, such as monkey, chimpanzee, and gorilla, even though a human and these animals have the same origin. For a long time, I believed that a human behaves differently from the animal because a human has the specific structure of body and brain. However, once day, my mind was changed when I read an article about a young boy, named Mayanja, who was raised by monkeys. By the time people found him, he had been living with his adoptive monkeys for three years. He had a human body but had a monkey mind. He learned all of the mannerism of the monkeys, such as making monkey sounds, lying on the ground, or eating grass. Therefore, I wonder what will happen if a person and an animal are raised in the same environment.

In the 1930s, a psychologist, Winthrop Kellogg did an experiment called the ape and the child on his ten-month-old son Donald and a chimpanzee Gua. During nine months of the experiment, Donald and Gua were raised and taught in the same condition. After nine months, Kellogg gave “his children” some solving problem, such as hand-in-loop, suspended cookie, and the hoe and rake. The result was surprising. I thought than Donald would do better on the test than Gua, but it was the opposed. Gua was doing so much better than Donald in most of the tests, except the toilet training. She obtained human behavior, for example, eating with a spoon, wearing the shoes, standing upright, and opening the door with using the door handle. However, because of the structure of the brain, she could not speak or write a human language. The experiment had to stop when Winthrop and his wife realized that their son adopted Gua’s behavior. He barked as a monkey and started biting people surround him. This is one obvious example demonstrates the relationship between natural intelligence and environment. After nine months of living together, Gua and Donald imitated each other’s behavior. In Gua case, she was able to act like an adult; nevertheless, because of the limit in brain structure, she could not learn human language. In Donald case, he acquired all of the jungle action from Gua and then started acting as a chimpanzee. In a monkey boy case, which I mention in the introduction, even though Mayanja had human intelligence, he could not behave as human because he was raised by the monkeys. Therefore, I believe that both environment and natural intelligence have an impact on mental activity.

These examples can demonstrate the obvious effect of environment and natural intelligence on mental activity. They also show the animals and human are different because of the living condition and the brain structure. I still wonder when the living condition and the natural intelligence imitate, what part of animal brain prevents them from studying human language? If a person was raised by the animals when he or she comes back to human society, can that person survive or become a human in behavior?