hey! what do you think about Gorillas like Koko, who use sign language? i watched an inspiring documentary on it, and in my eagerness to learn more came across the darker side in some news article saying like oh she’s overweight and depressed, and her trainer reads too much into the signs that aren’t clear and so on. I’m confused, i want to believe that gorillas have a range of emotional intelligence and can express it and whatever (what about their paintings, eh?) thanks for ur insight ;)
Oh boy. Oh, oh boy. I’ve hung on to this ask for a while now because the history of apes and language research is a lot of shit to unravel.
It all honestly stems from a weird colonialist mindset (with racist undertones) that by gosh, we can teach these creatures to be human/civilized. The idea that great apes and other creatures like elephants and parrots have some hidden potential that is just waiting to be unlocked by the right scientist is, in my mind, nearly as awful as the mindset of European colonists who “discovered” foreign tribespeople and decided that they could be uplifted with the introduction of proper culture and manners. Not ever quite equal to the Europeans, mind you, but certainly similar enough to be charming.
Image above: The young chimpanzee Gua was one of the first documented cross-rearing experiments with great apes. Gua was returned to a zoo after her handlers’ ten-month-old son began imitating her sounds, not the other way around.
Does this seem too harsh? I’m sorry, but there are cruel parallels there
we can’t ignore. To assume that there is potential inside an animal we
can ‘unlock’ with the right coaxing is to assume that animals in the
wild are too stupid to do it on their own. That’s the crux of it. Other species do not communicate with each other the same way that we do. Of course they are not going to be able to mimic our methods perfectly. It would be ridiculous to me if a gorilla like Koko could speak in flawless sign language, because again, gorillas do not communicate the same way we do.
I should stop and say I don’t mean this as an indictment of you or anyone else who is fascinated by great ape language research. It is fascinating- but it is also rooted in a very, very sad and flawed history, and we cannot forget that. And we have to remember that something like an animal’s emotional intelligence is not proved or disproved by their ability to do human activities like painting pictures.
Again: see the shadiness? “Unless these animals can act like me, they aren’t intelligent.” That’s a messed-up way of thinking.
Until recently, all ape language experiments started with removing the apes from their mothers at birth and rearing them like humans. Unfortunately, as stated before, apes are not human. Koko, still in contact with her handlers as an adult, is a rarity: most of these experiments terminated after three months, when the apes became too strong and unruly to handle. These apes, raised like human children, then had to struggle to socialize with their own species once returned to them.
You don’t have to consider the living conditions of Koko, in particular, to realize that there are some things which seem terribly off about it. A stable gorilla social unit in the wild, as far as female gorillas are concerned, is a group of around five or more females along with their young of both sexes and one adult male. These females are a close-knit group of mothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins that generally stay together for life (unless the group becomes too large and splits). But Koko has lived most of her life alone, with occasional male companions such as Michael or Ndume (who she currently only sees through a fence barrier). Human companions do not make up for other gorillas.
Yes, Koko is overweight. Yes, her diet, as far as I’ve read, is crap. Gorillas almost never eat meat: she eats lots. They don’t eat much salt and refined sugar in the wild: she gets lots. She also apparently receives homeopathic medications, which no legitimately scientific organization should touch with a ten-foot pole.
And as for the scientific legitimacy of The Gorilla Foundation, which houses Koko? Well, how much new ape language research have you read from them in the past ten years? The place is still running, but the only paper I’ve seen concerning Koko in recent times concerns her ability to manage her breathing when playing with wind instruments. Interesting, but not exactly breaking any interspecies barriers. And the research on Koko does very little to help us understand and protect endangered wild apes. In fact, other research suggests that making apes act in humanlike ways reduces the public’s interest in conserving their wild counterparts.
Most of the ‘research’ on Koko is composed of anecdotes, and most of those anecdotes come from Francine “Penny” Patterson, Koko’s primary caretaker and the director of the gorilla foundation. In most videos provided to the public, what Koko signs, Penny interprets to the audience. Koko uses a modified version of American sign language called “gorilla sign language” (GSL), which means that even ASL speakers may not be able to interpret what she’s signing. Right now, a tiny number of people have the ability to interpret Koko, which is not good on the scientific front. It reminds me very much of the facilitated communication scandal that occurred in the 90s, where ‘facilitators’ claimed to be the only ones who could interpret the language of autistic children.
Now, I am not saying that great apes cannot communicate some things using sign language. (Nor am I trying to say that the plight of great apes is equivalent to the autistic children abused through facilitated communication or the people oppressed by European colonizers. Though the Gorilla Foundation apparently doesn’t mind equating apes to humans with disabilities.) There is certainly evidence that great apes can learn to identify objects using symbols, such as lexigrams or signs. Indeed, many wild animals use representative sounds or gestures for specific items, such as predators or types of food. But humans use language in more abstract ways than merely identifying objects- we are able to discuss the past and present and things about people who aren’t in the room. The evidence that apes can communicate things like this through sign language or other forms of symbolic communication isn’t just limited- it’s basically nonexistent. (Notice that I’m only talking about communication here- apes may still be able to understand things like this while not being able to communicate them with others!)
Dressing apes up as humans an trying to teach them to talk the way we do was a research fad that appears to be, thank goodness, in its death throes. You can’t find much research about it in the past ten years that wasn’t published by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who has an equally problematic history with her captive bonobos as Penny Patterson has with Koko. This is because it’s considered barely scientifically valid by the science community is large. The question, “Can apes communicate just like people do?” is a resounding “No,” as far as science is concerned.
Most research on ape communication is now focused on the study of natural behaviors of apes, such as gestures used by wild chimpanzees. These will teach us much more about chimpanzees than any cross-rearing study ever will. We should be focusing on understanding the apes, rather than trying to get them to use human languages they are poorly equipped to use.
In closing: I haven’t even touched many of the issues with ape language studies, such as the sexual harassment scandal against Patterson and the experiments on Nim Chimpsky because this answer has gone on far too long. It is a tangled goddamn nightmare out there. I know that many people want to focus on the ‘they’re just like us!’ aspect and ignore the rampant abuse heaped on the animals in question- but if you truly love apes, you cannot. Suffice it to say: if you are looking for signs of emotional intelligence and social cognition in the great apes, please look for it in apes acting like apes, not apes acting like humans.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 