PrimatePoetics | SocialFiction

The Who is Who of PrimatePoetics

Many more apes have passed through the various ape language research projects, some of them learned nothing, some of them were 'control-animals', some of them died before their education could start. This list is incomplete and under constant revision.

? A B C D G I K L M N P R S T V W

?

?? (orang-utan, 1908? - 1913?, two words) William Furness tried to get two orang-utans and two chimpanzees to talk. One chimp died quickly, the other chimp learned nothing but one orang-utan showed great potential. By manipulating his jaws and lips she could say 'papa' after six months of daily coaxing. By the time Furness was beginning to teach her a second word, 'cup' he claimed she could already understand everything he said to her. Furness also succeeded in teaching all apes the alphabet up to the letter 'm'. In comparing the two species Furness considered the Orang-utan more apt to learn then the chimpanzee due to their nature.

A

AI (chimpanzee, 1976(?)) was born in Sierra Leone and arrived at the Kyoto Primate Research Institute in 1977. In 1978 began her training in linguistic skills. She is trained in lexigrams but she is best known for the lighting speed with which she performs on-screen short memory tasks.

Ally (chimpanzee, 1969-?, 130 sign ASL)

Ally was born at the chimpfarm from Pan and Caroline. After six weeks he was placed in the care of Sheri Roush. Roush was a catholic and she had Ally baptised and taught him the ASL sign for cross. At the age of three Ally was put under the care of Roger Fouts. Ally was a good student and signed with “lightning speed”. As Fouts wrote: “Signing to Ally was like like talking to a whirlwind; he'd pause long enough to flash a sign, but he was gone before you could sing back. Ally's signs were big, bold, and expressive, the ASL equivalent of a very loud child... When Ally signed 'hat' he would slap his own head so hard you thought he would fall down.” Ally scored well in grammar tests and was believed to understand a good deal of what was being said around him. The last thing known about him is that he was sold to a biomedical company.

Austin (chimpanzee, 1974-1998) was raised closely together with Sherman, in a project focussing on chimp-chimp rather than human-chimp communication. Sherman and Austin learned how to use lexigrams to work together and corrected each other's language. They enjoyed this so much they also did it unprompted for the sheer fun of it.

AZY (orang-utang, 1977) was born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park and after some relocations he lives at the Great Ape Trust since 1994. Azy is a 'receptive' learner of the 70 orang-lexigrams. Indah is his sister.

B

Bobby (chimpanzee, 1960ties)

Bobby was partly home-raised by Elizabeth Mann-Borgese, the youngest daughter of Thomas Mann. After successfully teaching an English setter and an elephant to type dictated words, Mann-Borgese wanted to try with a chimp. Bobby could type words like: Bob, banana, grape, etc. When Bobby got older he was moved to the Yerkes Primate Centre where his typing stopped.

Bonnie (orang-utan, 1978) lives at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. She is the first documented ape to have learned to whistle after hearing a caretaker do so. Orangs do not normally whistle, and they do not whistle tunes. Orang-utan Indah who lives next cage also whistles and it is believed to have got the idea from Bonnie.

Booee (chimpanzee, 1964? - ?) was educated by Roger Fouts and his display of natural non-linguistic understanding persuaded Sue Savage-Rumbaugh to move into ape-language research. Booee was born in captivity and lobotomised before entering the language program in Norman Oklahoma. Booee ended his life as the property of a pharmaceutical company testing hepatitis medication. The only noticeable effect of Booee's brain split was this drawings invariably consisted of two distinct scribblings in opposite corners of the canvas.

Bosondjo (bonobo, 1971-2005) was netted in Zaire (Congo) and died from chronic heart failure. He fathered 18 offspring -- six males and 12 females, including Kanzi and Panbanisha-- and had 13 grandchildren, including Nyota and Nathan.

Bow (chimpanzee, 2002, lexigram based system, English and Hebrew) is home-raised and taught by Aya Katz. The lexigrams Katz uses are of her own design and each lexigram is actually the word of the thing named in English and Hebrew. Katz noticed that when Bow gave the wrong lexigram the incorrect lexigram always had a very similar spelling to the correct lexigram. This led her to believe that Bow knew how to spell. To verify this the lexigrams were replaced with letters (both English and Hebrew letters) and low and behold Bow could not just spell in one but in two languages! Interestingly enough Bow's English often lacked vowels, just like the Hebrew, surely suggesting that Hebrew is the native human tongue? Syntax and grammar have no secrets for Bow either. Video documentation of Bow clearly shows Katz hand guiding the hand of Bow to select the letters on the wall.

Bruno (chimpanzee, 1968-?) was not very interested in learning ASL at first but when Fouts threatened to hurt him with a cattle-prod he suddenly appeared to know all the signs taught him. He lived with Booee and they signed a lot to each other, mostly about food and play: “Booee me food” etc.

C

Chantek (orang-utan, 1977, 150 words in sign language) means 'beautiful' in Malay. He is trained by Lyn Miles prefers to use names rather than pronouns even when talking to a person. He invented signs of his own (e.g., "eye drink" for contact lens solution, "no-teeth" to show that he would not use his teeth during rough play and "dave missing finger" for a university employee (who presumably should not be trusted with fireworks)). Chantek uses adjectives to specify attributes, such as "red bird", and "white cheese food eat" (cottage cheese). He overgeneralizes, for example, he uses the sign 'Lyn' for all caregivers, but never for strangers. Other comments included 'bad bird' at noisy birds giving alarm calls, 'coke drink' after drinking his coke, 'pull beard' while pulling a care-giver's hair through a fence, 'time hug' while locked in his cage as his care-giver looked at her watch, and 'red black point' for a group of coloured paint jars. The food given to them in reward for signing at Yerkes Primate Center caused severe obesity, at the end his weight was 230Kg while 130Kg is considered normal. He is now at the Great Ape Trust.

Cindy (chimpanzee, 1966? -? ) was brought back from Africa by a Peace Corp Volunteer as a pet and ended up under the care of Fouts at the chimp farm. She was very passive and usually tagged along after Thelma. She ended up in a biomedical research laboratory.

Coby (chimpanzee, 1980, 50 signs) became too strong for his private owners and at the age of five he first went to Pennsylvania and then to Black Pine Animal Park in Arizona. Here they found out that Coby was trying to sign to her keepers. Coby is the only known non-academic ASL-competent chimpanzee. Having spend 12 years in environments where nobody could 'speak' to her, her language skills had deteriorated. Primate researcher Patrick Drumm is working with to revive her “sloppy signing”.

D

Dar es Salaam (1976-?, 122 signs ASL)was part of the second round of studies instigated by Allen and Beatrice Gardner. Dar is very imposing physically and went to Fouts' santuary in Ellensburg, Washington at age four together with Tatu. Dar was especially close with Loulis.

G

Gua (chimpanzee, 1930(?), 95 English words) at 7,5 months was 'adopted' as a family member by psychologist's couple W.N. and L.A. Kellogg and raised in companion with their 10 months old son Donald. Gua was considered superior to Donald in responding to human words. Gua began to recognize the voices of individuals, thereafter probably the articulation of simple words. Gua first learned the command "no-no", and her second command and learned response was "kiss-kiss". Toward the middle of the nine-month period, the sudden development of the child enabled him to surpass Gua in the number of words and phrases he comprehended. At the end of the nine-month period the comprehension vocabulary of Donald were 107 words and phrases; Gua's was 95 words and phrases. A persistent rumour says that the experiment was stopped because Donald was using ape calls to ask for food.

I

Indah , 'beautiful' in Indonesian (orang-utang, 1975-2004) was born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park and after some relocations she went to the Great Ape Trust since 1994. Indah was thaught the 70 orang-lexigrams.

K

Kanzi (bonobo, 1980, 348 lexigrams yerkish, 3000 spoken English words) is widely acclaimed as the greatest poet in the PrimatePoetic canon. Kanzi is the first ape to have learned language through observation rather than through direct training. The list of his achievements is endless. During a performance of a Maori War Dance staged for a group of bonobos, a dance which includes thigh-slapping, chest-thumping, and hollering, almost all the bonobos present interpreted this as an aggressive display, and reacted with loud screams, tooth-baring, and pounding the walls and floor. All but Kanzi, who remained perfectly calm, and conveyed to researcher Savage-Rumbaugh that he knew that no threat was meant, but that the performance should be apart from the other bonobos so as not to upset them.

Knobi (orang-utan, 1979) was born in a Nebraska zoo and went to the Great Ape Trust in Ohio in 2005 to join Azy as a participant in language studies. No further updates on her training are known.

Koko, short for Hanabi-Ko(gorilla, 1971, over 1000 signs ASL, 2000 words spoken English) is part of the ASL project of the Gorilla foundation. Koko has created new terms for unnamed objects: "elephant baby" for a Pinocchio doll, "bottle match" for a cigarette lighter, "finger bracelet" for "ring", “white tiger” for zebra and "eye hat" for a Halloween mask. She refers to humans as "nipples". Her IQ is rated between 75 and 95 (whatever that means). After feeling discomfort for a few weeks over a toothache, Koko reached the point were she indicated number nine on a chart mapping the intensity of pain on a scale of one to ten. Her tooth was consequently extracted. In 1998 Koko made her début on AOL, together with her educator Penny Patterson. Koko is not talking much and saying even less. Some of her quotes from the transcript are : "Lip apply-lip lipstick" (looking at the picture of a woman model in the magazine.), "Birthday... Food smoke", "Lips hurry good give-me", "This...stink. This." (indicating flower), “Foot, foot, bigtoe-foot good go” (about gorilla Michael), "Frown red bad bad... red good give-me", and so forth amidst purrs and no signs at all. Koko had several cats as pets, one she chose herself from a litter and named AllBall. When AllBall died Koko signed "sad" and "cry".

Kokomo Jr. (chimpanzee, ?-?, 1 word), was a commercially exploited show ape often appearing on American Television from the 1950ties to his retirement in 1982. Apart from his bow-tie and paintings Kokomo Jr. stunned the world in 1952 when saying 'mama' on the Merv Griffin show. It took four months before Kokomo Jr. could make a sound with his vocal cords. It took another three months to shape his mouth, jaws and lips in such a way that he could pronounce the 'm'. 

L

Lana an acronym for Language Analogue (chimpanzee, 1970) was the first ape to be trained in the Yerkish system developed by Duane Rumbaugh and his team. When Lana accidentally activated the wrong lexigram, Lana used the PERIOD key to restart the sentence; Lana did this on her own before it occurred to the researchers. Lana also used NO as a protest (for example, when someone else was drinking a Coke and she did not have one) after having learned it as a negation ("it is not true that...").

Loulis (chimpanzee, 1978) is named after his caregivers, Louise and Lisa, at Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta where he was born. Loulis was the first ape to ever learn a human language from an ape. After eight days with Washoe, Loulis learned his first sign for the name of the person who gave them heir breakfast. For the first five years of his life, Loulis's human handlers only used seven signs around him (the signs used were 'who', 'which', 'want', 'where', 'name', 'that', and 'sign'). Loulis was able to acquire the rest from Washoe. She learned signs by watching it used, by 'babbling' and then by using them.

Lucy Temerlin(chimpanzee, 1970ties, over 100 signs ASL) was raised by psychotherapist M. K. Temerlin as if she were a human child. She was educated in ASL by Fouts. She appeared in Life magazine, and became famous for drinking gin, rearing a cat, and using Playgirl and a vacuum cleaner for sexual gratification. Fouts has written that he when would arrive at Lucy's home at 8:30, Lucy would greet him with a hug, take the kettle, fill it with water, find two cups and tea bags, and brew and serve the tea. Lucy would eavesdrop on conversations held by humans. By the time she was 12, the Temerlins were no longer able to care for her, and she was shipped to a chimpanzee rehabilitation centre in Senegal, then flown to Gambia, where she was shot and skinned by a poacher. Her feet and hands were hacked off for sale as trophies.

In this sign-language conversation, Fouts asks Lucy about a pile of chimpanzee faeces on the floor and become the first person to be lied to by a non-human:

Fouts: WHAT THAT?

Lucy: WHAT THAT?

Fouts: YOU KNOW. WHAT THAT?

Lucy: DIRTY DIRTY.

Fouts: WHOSE DIRTY DIRTY?

Lucy: SUE (a graduate student).

Fouts: IT NOT SUE. WHOSE THAT?

Lucy: ROGER!

Fouts: NO! NOT MINE. WHOSE?

Lucy: LUCY DIRTY DIRTY. SORRY LUCY.

M

Matata (bonobo, 1970, Netted in Zaire, arrived in Atlanta, US in 1975, six food words) was the foster mother of Kanzi. After five years of training she only managed six words for food. Her low ability for language-acquisition is thought to be a result from living wild in her early years which trained her eye gaze patterns to continually scan the environment, making it impossible for her to concentrate on language tasks. 

Michael (gorilla, 1973-2000, 600 signs ASL) is part of the ASL project of the Gorilla foundation. He has given us the first recorded piece of PrimatePoetic autobiography. "Squash meat gorilla. Mouth tooth. Cry sharp-noise loud. Bad think-trouble look-face. Cut/neck lip (girl) hole." Which is thought to be a description of the death of his mother killed by poachers when he was young. Michael was taught to paint and used his sign language to provide titles for his own artworks: "Apple Chase", a painting depicting his pet dog Apple whom he enjoyed chasing; "Toy Dinosaur", a painting of a rubber dinosaur toy; "Stink Gorilla More", (a painting of flowers, "stink" was Michael and Koko's mutual sign for 'flowers'); and "Me, Myself, Good" a self-portrait including his hand print.

Moja (chimpanzee, 1972-2002, 168 signs ASL), trained by Allen and Beatrice Gardner and later by Roger Fouts, knew the word for 'purse' and once put a purse on her foot and went around saying 'shoe'. Moja drawings were uncharacteristically simple for a chimpanzee and it is believed that his drawings of a 'bird' capture the gesture of the ASL sign for that word.

Moses (chimpanzee, 1890-ties) favourite ape of Richard Lynch Garner. Moses was taught to pronounce four words: 'mamma' because it is a universal word of human speech; the French 'feu', fire; the German 'wie', how; and the native Nkami 'nkgwe', mother. But despite 'bribes' of corned beefs Moses never learned to speak any of them. 

Mulika (bonobo, 1983, Yerkish) is the younger sister of Kanzi and trained in the same way. Her first lexigram at twelve months was 'milk'. After 22 months she used 6 lexigrams productively and could comprehend 42 lexigrams and spoken English. She learned this, like Kanzi, by observation, but much less fluently.

N

Nim Chimpsky(chimpanzee, 1973–2000, 25-125 signs ASL), appropriately named after the most nonsensical of all white coats in the anti-PrimatePoetic camp was born on the chimp farm. Nim was educated by Herbert Terrace who hoped to demonstrate to the naysayers that apes like Washoe were using real language instead of being cued. Ironically, after initial rave reviews of Nim's skills, Terrence himself concluded that Nim was 'deceiving' him. In 44 months Nim Chimpsky learned 125 signs. But analysis of Nim's utterances afterwards found that they lacked grammar and the number of signs Nim used was brought back to 25. The longest recorded sentence is the 16-word-long "give orange orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me me give give me you." More typical quotes are "Hug me Nim", "Me Nim eat", "Me more eat". Terrace dismissal of Nim's abilities were eagerly used to argue for a mortuary on all ape language research. Ape languge researchers like Fouts and Savage-Rumbaugh (and apparently Terrace's own staff) scorned Terrace's methodology and conclusions. Nim himself delivered the biggest rebuke to Terrace, after he had relocated back to the chimp farm, under the care of Fouts, his use of ASL rose dramatically. After a brief stay in a medical research facility he lived the rest of his days on a Texan ranch, "too wild for a house and too human for a cage". Nim's biography written by Elizabeth Hess was published in 2008.

Nyota (bonobo, 1998) son of Panbanisha was raised by ethnographer William Fields as part of an experiment to describe the culture of a non-human society. Nyota's lexigram utterances “have always been unusual and distinct”. A common expression of his is "quiet think" which probably means "Let's have some quiet time together." She is expected to stand on the shoulders of giants.

P

Panbanisha (bonobo, 1995) meaning “cleave together for the purpose of contrast” in Swahili is the daughter of Matata. She was co-reared with chimpanzee Panzee and was first introduced to human caregivers, spoken English and a visual-graphic lexigram keyboard system when she was seven weeks old. She learned to use the lexigrams by observation. She is the most competent of all primates of the Great Ape Trust. One day she was strolling through the woods when she suddenly, pointed to the signs on the lexigram board for "Fight," "Mad," "Austin". Savage-Rumbaugh asked, "Was there a fight at Austin's house?" "Waa, waa, waa" said the chimpanzee. Later Savage-Rumbaugh learned that earlier in the day two Austin and Sherman, two chimps, had caused a ruckus that Panbanisha would certainly have overheard. At another time Panbanisha had been looking out of the windows for days, longing to go for a walk in the woods, suddenly he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down the lexigrams of the relevant words on the floor to announce his desire. He had invented writing and has used it ever since! Statistical research (a white coat always wants to make sure) showed that when Panbanisha and Kanzi typed a wrong lexigram for an object, the mistaken lexigram looked alike, sounded alike or was part of the same category as the missed right one, i.e. was not random.

Pancho (koola-kamba, ?) Sue Savage-Rumbaugh gives no biographical data other than that Pancho came to the Institute for Primate Studies in the 1970ties and that it was believed that he was a Bonobo. Savage-Rumbaugh and Pancho got along very well, and she was impressed with his communication skills which she rated as high as Lucy Temerlin's despite the fact that Pancho was never educated in langauge.