When they will start talking ...!!!

When I was a little kid my great grand ma used to tell me a story of a mouse couple that one season ate too much that they became so fat and could not fit into the mouth of the hole which served as their abode.
Then they decided to go to a man who could help them by taking out some fat from their bodies so that they become slim enough again to enter their home. They requested the cobbler, the carpenter, the king, the queen but no one agreed to help them. I still wonder how would they have told their problem to these people who did not understand their language probably. If you believe my great grand ma they told this all in the language that a man can understand as in “ O dear carpenter ! could you please help us by taking out this extra amount of fat that we have accumulated by eating a lot this season!!! “.
Crazy story for adults !! right ?? But I loved it back then.
If I ask you to imagine a day when this story would be actually possible.. no No no no .. not the too much eating and getting fat part.. but the talking to humans part.

If you believe me I read MARK LEYNER explaining in nytimes how this may come true and you may actually have a talking mouse in your home.
Now to add to your knowledge
“
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have engineered a strain of mice that possesses the human FOXP2 gene, considered by evolutionary biologists to be among several crucial components that endow people with the capacity for speech. Already, the swap of mouse FOXP2 for human FOXP2 has altered the way the mice communicate with one another (their ultrasonic whistles have become slightly lower-pitched).
“
This is not about some sign language or some training to the monkeys which enables them to play with keyboards. This thing is about a rat that’ll be able to sit with you in evening and discuss day to day activities and talk about the political situation in India or just tell old rat stories.

I would be continuing in Mark’s words from here on:
Please visit NYtimes for original article.
After millenniums of maintaining their evolutionary vow of silence, can you imagine — once the genetic gag has come off — how much these mice will have to say? The din of mouse prattle will deafen the planet. And don’t think this is going to stop with just mice. We all know how uncontainable technological innovation is.
If you think I’m just being cynical and churlish about all this, imagine that you’re walking down the street, minding your own business, and a dog looks up and says: “You didn’t complete your b.tech from VIT University, did you? Batch of ’08? You look so familiar.” Do you really want to have to have a conversation with every puggle you encounter? Isn’t it hard enough already to avoid meaningless conversations with people you don’t know?
Sure, there will be the elation of that initial “Doolittle moment.” Ah — the animals will have such wisdom to impart. I imagine that speaking will lead to writing, and writing will lead inexorably to screenplays. And who could resist a remake of “101 Dalmatians” written by actual Dalmatians? But chances are there will be the same ratio of banality to profundity as there is with people. There’ll be a lot of complaining about their minor ailments, endless talk about their own kids, grousing about their mates, etc.
There will also be fundamental philosophical implications — Heidegger’s notion that animals can’t truly experience death because they lack language will have to be completely reassessed, for example. And, perhaps of more immediate consequence, there will be serious economic repercussions, particularly for meat processors. All it will take is one talking cow on “Oprah,” chronicling the horrors of the slaughterhouse, and beef consumption worldwide will cease immediately. (Ditto, some erudite chicken on “The Charlie Rose Show.”)
Now the most nightmarish one— is the prospect of talking insects. You know that time of night when you’re lying in bed and you’re beset by unpleasant thoughts, by all manner of regrets and doubts and self-abasement? I haven’t really accomplished anything I intended to in my life. That sort of stuff? Imagine some mosquito maliciously egging you on. Or imagine that you walk into the kitchen for a midnight snack, turn the light on, and there’s an enormous water bug in the middle of the floor. As you raise your rolled-up magazine for the death blow, the bug looks up at you plaintively and says: “Dude, please. I’ve got a family. Let me go. You’ll never see me again. I swear to God.”
O.K., granted, FOXP2 is only one of the so-called “language genes,” many of which remain to be discovered. But it’s obvious to me that we’re already on the slippery slope to animal eloquence.
As punishment for giving fire to mankind, Prometheus was chained to a cliff, where an eagle gnawed at his liver every day. I can only say to the researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology that, for helping give animals the gift of gab, and creating the very real possibility of snidely murmuring mosquitoes and cockroaches able to plead for their lives, you may all deserve an even harsher fate: being chained to a cliff and talked to death by an eagle that just won’t shut up.


Over and Out 