Farewell Koko, the gorilla who proved animals can talk to us
(She learnt 1,000 words of sign language but died grieving she never had a baby)
EvERY pet owner has said it: ‘I swear that animal understands every word!’ For Koko the gorilla, who lived in California with her devoted keeper, scientist Francine ‘Penny’ Patterson, that claim was literally true.
Koko knew at least 1,000 words of American Sign Language (ASL) and appeared to respond to thousands more that she heard spoken. Once, listening to Dr Patterson and another zoologist debating whether to label Koko a ‘juvenile’ or an ‘adolescent’, she interrupted in sign language: ‘No, me gorilla!’
That was 40 years ago, around the time Koko first became an international celebrity in the late Seventies, starring in Tv documentaries and on magazine covers. Since then, she has inspired a best-selling children’s book, been befriended by Hollywood A-listers including Leonardo DiCaprio and Robin Williams, and changed the way science perceives communication and emotion in the great apes.
But Koko, who died in her sleep on Tuesday night aged 46, never achieved her dearest ambition — to be a mother. From the age of nine, when asked what present she wanted most, Koko would hold her elbows and rock her arms from side to side, the universal sign for cradling an infant.
She nursed dolls constantly, pretending to feed and scold them as a human child would.
When visitors showed her photos of their children, Koko would take the pictures and coo over them, kissing their faces.
But despite attempts over many years to pair her with a mate, Dr Patterson was unable to help the lonely creature have what she desired most.
A Western Lowland Gorilla, Koko was born at San Francisco Zoo on July 4, 1971, and named Hanabi-Ko — Japanese for ‘fireworks child’ — in celebration of her birthday, America’s Independence Day. It was soon shortened to the jauntier Koko.
But she did not thrive in captivity and for her first year showed signs of malnourishment.
DR Patterson was then a 25-year-old psychology PhD student at Stanford University, hoping to discover whether apes could learn to communicate in sign language. Her tutor was sceptical, and set the bar for success very low: if she could teach a gorilla just three handsigns — ‘eat’, ‘drink’ and ‘more’ — within four years, the project could be deemed a success.
In Seventies California, people saw nothing odd about a student keeping a young gorilla on campus or even driving to the supermarket with Koko in the passenger seat of her Datsun.
But the idea that an animal could exhibit emotions or learn human language was regarded not only as far-fetched, but as unscientific nonsense.
The most Koko would ever do, scoffed behaviourists, was learn to imitate human gestures blindly, in exchange for food.
Within weeks, the gorilla proved them wrong. She mastered the sign for ‘drink’, then two more. Dr Patterson now believes from their earliest days together, Koko was also attempting to use gestures she had devised or learned from other zoo gorillas and that sign language might be instinctive among our ape cousins.
Koko went on proving the sceptics knew nothing. Her vocabulary grew to dozens, then hundreds of words. When she didn’t know a word, she combined others to create new ones: a hair brush was a ‘scratch comb’, and a ring was a ‘finger bracelet’.
Ice cream was ‘my cold cup’. Nectarine yoghurt, her favourite, was ‘orange flower sauce’. And since Koko knew she wasn’t human, she described herself as a ‘fine person gorilla’.
When, at the end of the fouryear experiment, San Francisco Zoo asked for their gorilla back, Dr Patterson raised $12,500 (about £50,000 today) to buy her.
She approached journalists to drum up publicity: Koko was profiled in the Washington Post and became a cover star for National Geographic magazine. For the photograph, she held a camera and took her own picture in a mirror — her first selfie — for which she was paid $750 (£3,000).
The possibilities of genuine communication with an animal caused ripples far beyond the scientific world. Author Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park,
was inspired to write a novel called Congo, about a female gorilla fluent in sign language who helps explorers discover a tribe of human-ape crossbreeds in the African rainforest.
But Koko’s fame came at a price. Many, including scientists, hated the implication that humans were not as special as we claimed — that an animal could learn language and become self-aware like us.
Dr Patterson’s claims became increasingly provocative: in 1978, she told supporters in a newsletter that she had asked Koko to explain ‘the meaning of life’. At first the gorilla tried to dismiss the question with a joke, by whirling on the spot. Then she became serious. ‘People be polite,’ she signed. ‘People have goodness.’ Attention from both fans and critics became so intense that Dr Patterson and Koko had to move to a secret location with a converted — and heavily reinforced — trailer in the Santa Cruz mountains near Woodside, California. They were joined by a friend from Dr Patterson’s student days, Dr Ronald Cohn.
The two humans were not a conventional couple, but regarded themselves as Koko’s mother and father: ‘An interspecies family.’
In the hope of breeding a baby gorilla, Dr Patterson introduced a second animal, a pre-pubescent male called Michael.
The plan was that the two apes would have time to get to know and trust each other, before mating in the future. But the scheme backfired. Koko and Michael seemed to regard each other as sister and brother, and never attempted to breed. There was no doubt, though, that Koko liked boys. She would develop crushes on male researchers and demand to admire their bare chests.
Sometimes, at her most lovelorn, she would spend hours weaving garlands of flowers for her head. Was she trying to make herself beautiful, as human brides do? Sceptics scoffed at the notion.
To allay her desperate yearning for a baby, in 1985 Dr Patterson gave her a kitten, a grey Manx that a besotted Koko named All Ball.
Given half a chance, the gorilla would never have let go of her adored pet. She cradled and nuzzled it constantly, tickling its fur and grooming it. The kitten was less pleased with this obsessive attention and, as cats will, began to bite and scratch to gain a little independence.
Koko would tell it off, calling it ‘bad cat’, but didn’t love it any less. Dr Patterson began limiting the time that gorilla and kitten spent together: All Ball came for ‘visits’.
Koko soon learned that word, and pleaded for visits all the time. Her devotion became national news, with another National Geographic cover, this time of a 300lb maternal gorilla cradling a bundle of feline fluff.
But when All Ball was six months old, the little cat was run over and killed by a car near the trailer.
Penny and Ron broke the news to Koko together. She reacted with horror, keening in a drawn-out moan that some gorilla researchers believe is the animal’s equivalent of sobbing. Over and over, she signed the words ‘sad’, ‘bad’ and ‘frown’. Unable to believe All Ball was gone, she begged to see it: ‘Cat gorilla have visit. Koko love. Do visit do.’
To raise funds, and draw attention to the plight of gorillas in the wild, Dr Patterson wrote a children’s book called Koko’s Kitten. It became a best-seller and helped pay for Koko’s food and human helpers for the rest of her life.
Koko’s charity, The Gorilla Foundation, now distributes the book free in parts of Africa where ‘bush meat’, or ape flesh, is still eaten — in the hope of shocking people into abandoning the practice.
Dr Patterson has been frequently criticised for not sharing all her research: she estimates she has 4,000 hours of footage showing communication with Koko, for example. But it’s easy to understand why, after devoting almost half a century to nurturing and educating this unique animal, the 71-year-old psychologist is mistrustful of mainstream science.
WHeN Koko took a standard IQ test, for example, she scored 85 — at the low end of average for human beings. That might seem pretty good for an animal. But Dr Patterson criticised the result: the test was weighted against gorillas, she said. One question asked what offered the best refuge — a cup, spoon, tree or house? Koko said, ‘tree,’ and her answer was marked as wrong.
Actors seemed to understand her better. Robin Williams spent an hour rolling around the floor of her trailer, tickling her until the two of them were in hysterics. She had great fun playing with his spectacles too. Star Trek’s William Shatner and rock stars Sting and Peter Gabriel were also popular visitors.
Koko, who grieved so deeply for her kitten, seemed to understand that death was inevitable. She lost her ‘brother’ Michael in 2000: male gorillas in captivity often die in their 30s from heart disease.
When Dr Patterson asked her what death was, Koko replied: ‘Trouble old . . . comfortable hole bye . . . sleep.’
Despite the sceptics, Koko compelled us to re-evaluate our entire understanding of the great apes.
‘The fact that Koko can love,’ Penny Patterson once said, ‘that we can love each other though we’re different species, really gets people thinking deeply about life. And that’s what we need to do.’