Human-nonhuman Communication
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According to Koko’s website, Koko is a 35 year-old lowland gorilla that learned to speak American Sign Language when she was just a baby. Her teacher, Dr. Penny Patterson, began working with Koko as a Ph.D. project at Stanford, thinking it would only be a 4-year study. Thirty-some years later, Penny and Koko continue to work together at the Gorilla Foundation in one of the longest interspecies communication studies ever conducted, the only one with gorillas. Koko now has a vocabulary of over 1000 signs, and understands even more spoken English.
On April 26, 1998, Koko the gorilla gave an AOL live chat. Koko’s trainer, Dr. Francine “Penny” Patternson, used sign language to relay the gorilla questions from the online audience; 7,811 AOL members participated, ranking the chat the fifth most popular in AOL's history. The following are two excerpts from the live chat, which illustrate the ambiguity of Koko’s true ability to communicate with humans. HaloMyBaby is the moderator of the chat, DrPPatrsn is Penny Patterson, and LiveKOKO is Koko.
- HaloMyBaby: …MInyKitty asks Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
- LiveKOKO: Pink
- DrPPatrsn: We've had earlier discussion about colors today
- LiveKOKO: Listen, Koko loves eat
- HaloMyBaby: Me too!
- DrPPatrsn: What about a baby? She's thinking...
- LiveKOKO: Unattention
- DrPPatrsn: She covered her face with her hands....which means it's not happening, basically, or it hasn't happened yet.
- LiveKOKO: I don't see it.
- HaloMyBaby: That's sad!
- DrPPatrsn: In other words, she hasn't had one yet, and she doesn't see it happening. She needs several females and one male to have a family. In our setting it really isn't possible for her to have a baby.
- Question: Do you like to chat with other people?
- LiveKOKO: fine nipple
- DrPPatrsn: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."
In the above excerpts, Dr. Patterson tries to interpret Koko’s nonsensical responses into ones that directly answer the question. It is also interesting to note that when Dr. Patterson says, “nipple rhymes with people” she is implying that Koko understands rhyme schemes and the sounds of the words in addition to their meanings; this is highly unlikely. While Koko undoubtedly knows how to sign words, it is questionable whether her form of signing represents a true understanding of the English language (see Controversy below). The same can be said of pet dogs that respond to human commands. Most of this is due to operant conditioning (e.g. “Sit” in order to get a biscuit). It is more likely to do with the sexual harassment/nipple fetish that was said to be taking place and easily chalked off as something similar to a Freudian slip.
An important reminder for understanding human-animal communication is that many humans tend to anthropomorphize animals and thus believe that they have the capacity to understand human speech and language. Specifically, work by Rupert Sheldrake has explored the possible telepathic power of pets (i.e. a dog that seems to know when his owner is coming home). Given evidence for socialization and interspecies communication, it would be interesting to see how much knowledge pets can gain from humans and vice versa.
Read more about this topic: Interspecies Communication