Koko the gorilla‘s most human trait ... her longing to have a pet

Keeping great apes as pets is frowned on. even pop stars aren’t allowed to do it these days — Michael Jackson famously had a chimp called Bubbles in the eighties, but imagine the outcry today if Lady gaga owned an orangutan on a leash.

Still, if you’re an animal-lover, it’s impossible to see a baby gorilla without yearning to keep it. The spoilt child inside us pipes up: ‘Mum, mum, can i have a gorilla? All my friends have got gorillas, i promise i’ll look after it, can i have one?’

gorillas just don’t make practical housemates. They start off cute, the ideal mixture of toddler and dog, like a human baby with fur.

But in a couple of years they weigh more than giant Haystacks, and they’re stronger than a bulldozer.

A naughty puppy will jump off the sofa when you shout — but a gorilla can sit anywhere it likes, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Koko, The Gorilla Who Talks To People (BBC1) was meant to be a scientific documentary, exploring the possibility that our closest animal relatives can use human language to express thoughts and emotions.

But for anyone who dotes on pets, it was a real-life fantasy about what happens when you adopt an ape.

psychology phD student penny patterson borrowed baby Koko from a California zoo in the early Seventies, as part of a Stanford University experiment. She wanted to spend a year teaching American sign language to a gorilla, and at the end of 12 months the little primate had learned three hand gestures, for ‘eat’, ‘drink’ and ‘more’.

All that proves is that infant gorillas are slow learners. A dog could have mastered far more.

But Koko kept learning. This programme, assembled from thousands of hours of footage shot over four decades, revealed that while grammar was beyond her brain’s capability, she had an almost limitless power to absorb new words, which she strung together in imaginative ways.

By the time she was five years old, she was communicating constantly with penny, who had raised enough cash to purchase her permanently.

Koko could express feelings of love, sadness and grief, but her most human trait was her longing for a pet. When she was eight, she had a kitten for her birthday: she called it All Ball. pitifully, it was run over and killed at six months old.

The gorilla was heartbroken. She pleaded for another, in signs: ‘Cat gorilla have visit. Koko love. Do visit do.’ The meaning could not be plainer. This moving documentary didn’t reveal enough about the logistics of looking after a pet ape, though it obviously helps to live in California, where most of the population is so permanently zonked that nothing is weird, not even an eight-foot gorilla in the passenger seat of a Datsun. But it was a touching reminder of how like us animals really are and that, when they seem to understand every word we say, it’s probably because they do.

Daisy the dalmatian showed an extraordinary degree of perception and sensitivity in Rescue Dog To Super Dog (C4).

The boisterous pooch, saved by an animal charity in Devon, was being trained to assist 12-year-old Dom, a shy and serious boy with crippling muscular dystrophy.

The dog’s job was to push buttons, open doors and retrieve dropped toys. Despite the programme’s gloss, she was patently rubbish at it. The most complex instruction Daisy could master was ‘Sit’, and that was decidedly hit-and-miss.

But she was instinctively brilliant at loving Dom. Disability had left him isolated, with only adults to talk to. Daisy understood that he wanted silliness and soppiness, a friend who would love him to bits, and this she was able to do without any training at all.

‘i’ve got a dalmatian all to myself,’ he gasped happily.

We met Teddy the poodle too, a tiny companion for a girl named enola who suffered from a growth disorder.

Teddy, she said, was ‘ the best thing that’s ever happened to me’.

Their pets were wonderful. it’s just a shame all children can’t have a gorilla.