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FEATURE:  QUESTIONING TALKING APES AND CHIMPANZEE MEMOIRS
by Matt Nisbet
At twenty-six years of age, Koko has inspired a best-selling novel and film,
exhibited her own artwork, been the subject of more than two decades of
intense study, appeared on multiple covers of a leading international
magazine, and last week, hosted her own internet chat session.  Why all this
attention?  With beautiful dark hair, penetrating eyes and a strong figure,
Koko is said to be the world's most articulate female--female gorilla to be
more exact.
Koko, a resident of the Gorilla Foundation in the suburbs of San Francisco,
California, has been tutored in modified American sign language for 25 years
and reportedly is able to understand close to 2,000 words of spoken English.
Her trainers claim she has an IQ between 70 and 95, slightly lower than the
average human intelligence of 100.  Koko even has her own personal computer.
Apple donated a modified Macintosh with the aim of developing simpler touch-
screen technology.
On Monday, April 25, this alleged "Plato" of apes took part in what was
billed as the first "interspecies" cyberverse chat session.  Internet users
typed in questions from their computers across the country, and a moderator
fed them to Koko's trainer who translated the questions into sign language.
Koko responded in sign-language, the answers were interpreted into spoken
English by her trainer, and sent back out into cyberspace.  Koko answered
questions for half an hour, as long as her attention span would last.
Sponsored by America On-Line and Enviro-Link, an internet environmental
website, organizers said they hoped to spread awareness about breakthroughs
in
human-animal communication and the plight of gorillas in Africa.  "We're
trying to educate people about what they can do for Earth Day and beyond.
If
a gorilla can stand up and speak up about environmental issues, maybe normal
people can do the same," Enviro-Link spokesman Josh Knauer told ABC News On-
Line.

KOKO: THE MAKING OF A STAR
Koko got her lucky break when she met a young, brilliant Stanford graduate
student named Penny Patterson in 1972.  Patterson developed an immediate
fondness for Koko and, as part of her research in animal communication,
began
to teach Koko sign language.  Koko and Patterson moved their efforts to the
suburbs of San Francisco in 1979, funding for continued research coming from
private donations and exclusive ownership and sale of photos of Koko to
magazines.  In 1981, Patterson and Eugene Linden authored _The Education of
Koko_.  The gorilla received enormous international attention from NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC magazine, appearing on the cover in 1978 and 1985.  Koko has also
appeared on multiple television specials and news programs.
Starting with Jules Verne's 1901 _The Village in the Tree Tops_ and
including
Robert Merle's 1967 best-selling _Day of the Dolphin_, animal communication
has been a recurring theme in thrillers and science fiction novels.  In
1979,
popular author/film producer/science speculator Michael Crichton took Koko's
tale and wove it into his King's Solomon's Mine adventure novel _Congo_ .
As
he does in many of his books, Crichton blurred the lines between science
fact
and fantasy, prompting extraordinary belief among readers in the
communication
abilities and human-like intelligence of gorillas.  _Congo_ was turned into
a
less-than-successful film release in 1995.

APE LANGUAGE IN DOUBT
Despite widespread public belief in the ability of Koko to communicate with
humans through sign language, linguistic researchers question the claims.
Jim
Swanson, professor of linguistics at Dakota State University, told ABC News
On-line that Koko's trainers probably see what they want to see.  "If a
gorilla makes a gesture, the trainers see a postive response that they were
looking for."
Koko's sign language communication may be the mimicking of trainers or a
response to innnocent cueing.  Over-interpretation of Koko's signs may also
occur.   Some signs produced at random by the gorilla might be counted as
successes and recorded by researchers, while irrelevant signs are overlooked
and unreported.
TIME magazine dubbed Koko's internet chat session a "Dada exercise" noting
that Penny Patterson as interpreter used "some pretty impressive logic to
expand her simian friend's limited communication skills."  A partial
transcript from the session is revealing:
Question: Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
Koko signs:  Pink
Patterson explains:  We had earlier discussion about colors today.
Question:  Do you like to chat with people?
Koko signs: Fine nipple.
Patterson explains: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per
se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."
Question:  Does she have hair? Or is it like fur?
Koko signs: Fine.
Patterson explains:  She has fine hair.
Question:  Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you?
Koko signs:  Lips, apple give me.
Patterson explains:  People give her her favorite foods.
Linguists note that Koko's signs fail to produce the syntax of young
children's phrases, and cannot be considered actual language. They also
question why the flashes of human-like intelligence allegedly displayed by
Koko and other primates have not been observed in the wild.  For example,
Koko
uses paints to create what her handlers claim are pictures of her
surroundings
and representations of memories from early in her life.  Curiously though,
primates in the wild have yet to be observed displaying similar
picture-making
ability.
While little of the reseach on Koko has been published in scientific
journals, her trainer Penny Patterson has taken to the popular press and
electronic media to publicize mainly anecdotal accounts of her research
success with Koko.
CSICOP fellow Thomas Sebeok, Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the
University of Indiana, told ABC News On-Line that claims of Koko's ability
to
communicate using human-like language are "nonsense."
In his edited collection of articles on the topic, _Speaking of Apes_
(1979),
Sebeok warns of the "destructive pitfall of self-deception."  He describes
animal communication researchers as a "tightly knit social community with a
solid core of shared beliefs and goals."  He adds that "it is difficult to
imagine a skeptic being taken on as a member of such a 'team'."
Outspoken MIT linguist Noam Chomsky concludes in his contributed chapter to
Sebeok's anthology that "human language... is outside of the capacities of
other species."  Chomsky describes this lack of language ability on the part
of animals as a matter of a "different type of intellectual organization."

SUPPORT, HOWEVER, COMES FROM SOME BIG NAMES
Language studies with primates first occurred with chimpanzees in the 1960s.
One of the most publicized of the test subjects was a female chimpanzee
named
Lucy.  Famous primatologist Jane Goodall wrote in her book _Through a
Window_
that "Lucy, having grown up a human child, was like a changeling, her
essential chimpanzeeness overlaid by various human behaviors she had
acquired
over the years.  No longer purely chimp yet eons away from humanity, she was
man-made, some other kind of being."
Some scientists do point out possible benefits and expanded understanding
from primate language studies.  Arizona State University and Institute of
Human Origins
anthropologist Donald Johanssen told the San Franciso Examiner in 1988 that
the type of research surrounding Koko's language ability "tells us that
these
creatures have a considerably larger intellectual capacity than we ever
thought possible...Now when we see apes in the wild, we realize there is
something there common to all of us, and that they are as emotionally,
intellectually and evolutionarily close to us as any animals could be."  As
humans, we must "entertain the fact of that connection."
In discussing chimpanzee intelligence and language ability, Carl Sagan in
his
book _The Dragons of Eden_(1979) surmises that if gestural language like
American sign language were necessary to chimpanzee survival, "it does not
appear to me out of the question that, after a few generations in such a
verbal chimpanzee community, there might emerge the memoirs of the natural
history and mental life of a chimpanzee, published in English or Japanese."
Sagan finds it "striking" that there are "nonhuman primates so close to the
edge of language" and he suggests that it is likely that at some point in
early human history we exterminated other primates that exhibited traits of
intelligence.  By engaging in primate language studies today, humans are
"beginning a belated attempt to make amends."
However, Sagan revisits the topic in a less romantic and less dramatic
fashion in his 1992 best-seller _Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors_,
co-authored
with wife Ann Druyan.  Sagan and Druyan note that critics of primate
language
claims have "merely asserted that apes cannot use language, and then
dismissed
evidence to the contrary because it contradicted their assumption."
The husband and wife team conclude that "no ape has ever shown linguistic
abilities approaching those of a normal child entering kindergarten.
Nevertheless they seem to have a clear-cut, although elementary, ability to
use language."
Even if primate ability to communicate using human language is never
verified, or if the written memoirs of a chimpanzee never appear in a
library,
study of animal conigitive abilities can lead to greater understanding of
human evolution and man's place in nature.  Both Charles Darwin and Alfred
Russel Wallace, in their research leading to the discovery of evolution,
used
their observation of language-like quality in apes to confirm their theories
on the lineage of man.  Skeptic Noam Chomsky concedes that understanding the
intellectual capacity of apes may lead to greater understanding of human
cognitive ability. As for the general public, non-sensational media
portrayals
of Koko and primate language ability (trading  "interspecies" chat sessions
for  balanced scientific reporting) can ultimately lead to a greater
understanding of man's humble link to animals.
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