The wisdom of Koko the gorilla
She weighed in at 283 very muscular pounds, had dark, bushy eyebrows and a pointy skull, loved kittens and communicated with what some would consider a fairly limited vocabulary of 2,000 words.
Yet, however different and even intimidating she could seem, with her uncanny ability to express her thoughts and emotions and to affectionately connect with others, she expanded our understanding of what it means to be human.
And the remarkable thing was that Hanabi-ko – or Koko as she became universally known – wasn’t a human herself but a western lowland gorilla. The most famous gorilla, it turns out, in history.
For many years, this friend of celebrities and a celebrity herself, fascinated the world even as she showed that humans aren’t quite so unique or dissimilar in kind from other animals, particularly the higher primates, as they imagine.
Now, after dying peacefully in her sleep at the age of 46 at her home in California, Koko is rightly being remembered and mourned.
Born in 1971 at the San Francisco Zoo, Koko developed a serious illness at a young age and went to live with a researcher, Penny Patterson.
Their increasingly close relationship was to last the rest of Koko’s life. Patterson began teaching Koko sign language, and by the age of four, the gorilla had apparently mastered a vocabulary of 170 words. Over time, those language skills flourished, and her vocabulary eventually increased to 2,000 words, according to the Gorilla Foundation which oversaw Koko’s care.
Some in the scientific community questioned how real Koko’s linguistic abilities were. Koko’s response suggested their skepticism was misplaced.
Koko adopted a kitten named All Ball. When the feline was killed by a car in 1984, Patterson was filmed asking what Koko felt. Koko signed her response, on film: “Cat, cry, have-sorry, Koko-love.”
And love seemed the defining emotion for Koko. She befriended other animals and was especially gentle toward cats. In public appearances – and there were many – Koko appeared to experience the emotions of happiness, frustration and even heartbreak.
Appearing on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” she signed to host Fred Rogers that she loved him. After developing a later bond with the actor and comedian Robin Williams, she was reportedly crestfallen after he died in 2014.
Once, Koko appeared on the cover of “National Geographic” magazine in a photo she had taken herself. On another occasion, in 2012, she surprised researchers by playing the recorder.
To be sure, questions about Koko’s life are not limited to scientists. Animal rights activists have objected to the fact that she was kept in captivity and spent much of her life indoors, behind a chain-link fence. Didn’t Koko deserve to live freely, in the natural wilds of Africa that are home to her kind, these critics asked. Isn’t it wrong to make such an intelligent, sentient creature the involuntary subject of human research? Those are weighty questions. Yet we would still say Koko performed a service to humanity. Perhaps, rather than evincing human emotions, human affection or human thought, Koko demonstrated the capacity for a kind of feeling and intelligence that is not confined to Homo sapiens but is shared by many animals – including dolphins, whales, and elephants.
Perhaps she taught us – or at least some of us – to place a higher value on animals for what they are, as opposed to what we think they should be.
And if so, Koko the gorilla was surely as much a teacher of humans as a creature that humans taught.