The gorilla who learned sign language
Koko the gorilla, who has died aged 46, helped change the world’s views about the intelligence of animals and their capacity for empathy, thanks to her remarkable sign-language ability, and motherly attachement to pet cats.
Koko was taught sign language from an early age as a scientific test subject, and eventually learned more than 1000 words, a vocabulary similar to that of a human toddler.
She became a celebrity who played with the likes of William Shatner, Sting, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robin Williams. At her home preserve in California’s Santa Cruz mountains, where she was treated like a queen, she ran around with Williams’ eyeglasses.
In so doing, she showed the American public that a giant ape didn’t have to be scary, but wanted to be tickled and hugged.
Koko appeared in many documentaries, including a 2015 PBS one, and twice in
Her 1978 cover featured a photo she had taken of herself in a mirror.
She watched movies and TV, with her handlers saying her favourite movies included the Eddie Murphy version of and and her favourite TV show was
In 1996, she asked to be a mother. Despite attempts by her keepers to introduce male partners, she never became one. Instead, she had a series of kittens as pets.
Koko, whose given name was Hanabi-Ko, Japanese for fireworks child, was born at the San Francisco Zoo, and was taught sign language from the age of 1.
In 2004, she used American Sign Language to communicate that her mouth hurt and used a pain scale of 1 to 10 to show how badly it hurt.
‘‘Koko represents what language may have been 5 million years ago for people,’’ biologist Ronald Cohn said in 1996. ‘‘That’s the time that gorillas and humans separated in evolution.’’ –