Did Koko the Gorilla Understand?

Three years after her death, Koko the gorilla is still a household name. Videos of her taking Robin Williams’ wallet out of his pants pocket, or holding a kitten, or playing Red Hot Chili Peppers member Flea’s bass guitar — these images live on not only on the internet but also, to a certain extent, in our imaginations. 

Because Koko could use sign language. She was among the first great apes to learn to sign. And as a result, she gave many of us a window into what it could be like to “talk to the animals”—à la Doctor Dolittle. 

“This was my dream job,” Penny Pattterson, the psychologist who trained Koko, told VICE News. And part of what made working with Koko so exciting, says Patterson, was that she felt it “could be a strong contribution to knowledge about our ancestry and our relatedness to the great apes.” 

But Koko’s story is far more complex than most people realize—both more powerful and perhaps sadder than we might want to acknowledge. “Koko was amazing, but I'm glad there's only one,” says Ann Southcombe who worked on the Koko project in the late 1970s. “Because she sacrificed her gorilla-ness to be in that project. That's what kind of broke my heart.”

In Season 1 of the new podcast “A Show About Animals,” VICE News explores the history of the ape language studies of the 1970s—studies that were meant to show that humans weren’t the only animals who would use language but that ultimately showed that when scientists focus too much on trying to make other animals behave like us, the results can be both harmful to the animals they study, and to our relationship to nature. 

“We all project onto animals all kinds of human attitudes. That's why Doctor Doolittle is so famous. That's why there are all these stories about talking to animals,” says Herbert Terrace, a psychology professor at Columbia University who trained another singing ape, Nim Chimpsky. “But it's all projection.” 

“A Show About Animals” explores the story of Koko, along with the scientific rivalry that fractured an entire field of research, and its messy aftermath — from the mistreatment Nim Chimpsky suffered throughout his life, to the decades of controversy surrounding Project Koko. 

Koko was a star; she was loved by children and adults around the world. But behind all the touching moments she gave us is a much bigger debate that still impacts how science is conducted today. 

“Imagine deciding in 2020 to get into something that 40 years ago had caused a lot of heat,” said Federico Rossano, a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego who’s studying dogs that “talk” by pressing buttons that play pre-recorded words, like Tik Tok stars Bunny and Stella—and who says even today the fallout of Project Koko impacts animal research.

“There were a lot of people that as soon as they heard about it, they reached out to me and said, you know, watch out. Be very, very careful about what you're getting yourself into.” 

And yet, people still want to know: Can an ape learn to use a human language? Was it real? Did people fluent in American Sign Language understand these apes, too? Or were the scientists who trained them expecting too much? And did some researchers get lost in the dream they created?  

Find out on this season of “A Show About Animals,” a new podcast by VICE News, available wherever you get your podcasts.