Koko: A Talking Gorilla (Koko, le gorille qui parle)

Koko is a gorilla.

Ally is a chimpanzee.

This is Washoe.

She has already earned a place in the history of modern science.

She was ten months old in 1966

when psychologists Allen and Beatrix Gardner

began an experiment with her that rocked the scientific world.

Washoe is now 12.

She has a vocabulary of about 200 words.

She lives with other chimpanzees on an island

at the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma.

Roger Fouts was formerly the Gardners'assistant.

He was involved from the start

on experiments with chimpanzees using sign language for the deaf.

No one had ever attempted such experiments with gorillas.

Gorillas were thought to be too difficult to handle,

much more dangerous and less intelligent than chimpanzees.

The first birth here was in 1971.

It was Koko, whose mother is shown here.

Koko is available to us only because these gorillas

were taken from their mothers, from their native jungle,

their parents perhaps slaughtered.

Today, the only place where a gorilla is truly safe

is within the concrete walls of a zoo.

In Africa, they're driven out of the equatorial forests

by farmers and lumber companies,

as well as poachers.

Only a few thousand mountain gorillas are left.

Their only enemy is man.

Even though Koko was born in the San Francisco Zoo,

she's still an animal of the primeval forest, an exile.

Koko lives in a suburb south of San Francisco.

This is what's called her cultural environment.

The names of these places - Redwood City, Palo Alto -

serve as reminders that less than 100 years ago,

this area was covered by a huge forest.

On the campus of Stanford University,

Penny Patterson, 28, a graduate student in psychology,

is teaching Koko sign language.

Koko lives in a specially modified trailer.

Penny lives with her boyfriend off campus.

She has no children.

She arrives every morning before Koko wakes up

and returns every night when Koko goes to sleep.

The experiment began five years ago.

Penny hasn't had a single day of vacation since.

Penny's based her work on the Gardners' work with Washoe,

but with one important difference.

Tests for intelligence and vocabulary

are set up in three different ways.

With signs, with words, and with both at the same time.

The alligator is bottom left.

It's the third from the left.

Koko scores slightly lower than a child of the same age.

Gorillas in the wild are generally vegetarians.

Koko eats hamburgers and takes vitamins like any American child.

Twice a month, Koko's life is recorded on videotape.

Twice a week, a tape recorder is used instead.

Every word Koko uses each day is checked off.

Sometimes Koko makes up sentences,

and these too are taken down and analyzed by a computer

that extracts their grammatical structure.

Koko doesn't know what to make of her new yellow sweater.

She wants her old red one.

It was cold that day.

Gorillas are sensitive to cold and easily catch pneumonia.

At four, Koko loses her first tooth.

The event was filmed in Super 8.

This game was thought to have been invented by Koko.

In fact, it's a game played by young gorillas in the jungle.