The First Year in the Life of a Chimpanzee Instead, they focus on the myriad ways animals communicate.Elizabeth. She notes that while the debate over whether chimps have language, and what kind of language, continues, most researchers are no longer trying to teach animals our language. The project essentially tricked "him into thinking he is a human being, with no plan for protecting him," she says.īut Terrace says that "given that people eat meat, have pets and raise horses for races," what was done to Nim was not unethical.Īuthor Hess says Nim was a survivor who had a unique, charming personality. LaFarge, Nim's surrogate mother, says that as amazing as it was to have the experience with Nim, she now believes what happened was unethical. This is somebody that I raised - and that the system could let this happen was shocking." "And then, when he is 10 - him in a lab, in a cage, with nothing soft, nothing warm, with no people? This is my brother. "How do you reconcile a tiny chimp in blue blankets, drinking from a bottle and wearing Pampers. Lee, Nim's surrogate sister, says she took it hard when Nim was sold to the lab. Many of the people involved in Nim's life have been reflecting on their experiences and on the ethics of what they did.Īnd Elizabeth Hess, in a new book called Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, interviews many of the people who were involved in Nim's life and tells the story from differing perspectives He lived out the rest of his days at Cleveland Amory's Black Beauty Ranch, an animal sanctuary in Texas. Because he was a famous chimp - who even appeared on Sesame Street and The David Susskind Show- Nim's supporters were able to rescue him. Within a year, Nim was sold to a medical lab for tuberculosis studies. Research is not a secure proposition, and in 1981, all funding ended for the Oklahoma research program. One of the things that made Nim remarkable, Ingersoll remembers, was his "unbelievable personality." Nim understood humans better than any other chimp, Ingersoll recalls. He got to have a chimp group" and have a life that wasn't always controlled by humans, Ingersoll says. He was often in a cage with other chimps.īob Ingersoll, who worked at the institute and got close to Nim, says that while in Oklahoma, Nim was learning how to be a chimp again. Terrace ended the project in 1977, and Nim went to the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Okla., to live a very different life. In the end, Terrace came to believe that Chomsky was right, that Nim would never use language the way humans do - to form sentences and express ideas. He says that while watching a video of Nim signing with a teacher, he realized that the chimp was tracking most of his teacher's signs, imitating most of them, but he almost never made a sign spontaneously. But the question remained: Was he really learning language? By that time, Nim had learned about 125 signs. So Terrace took Nim to live in a mansion that was part of Columbia University. LaFarge's husband was never comfortable with Nim, and as Nim entered his "terrible twos," the chimp became too much of a handful. Soon he was breaking things all over the house. It wasn't easy to raise a chimp in a Manhattan brownstone. LaFarge carried Nim around on her body for almost two years. Nim's surrogate mother was Stephanie LaFarge, a psychology student studying with Terrace. "He was this tiny newborn being who happened to be a chimp, and it was probably love at first sight." "He was coming off the plane with my mom, wrapped up in baby blankets," Lee says. Jennie Lee was 10 when Nim came to live with her family. There, Nim joined a sprawling, chaotic blended family with many human siblings who could teach him sign language. To immerse Nim in a world where he would be taught sign language in the same way a human child would, Terrace brought him to live with a family in New York City in 1973, not long after the chimp was born.
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