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Home , Nim Chimpsky

CRITICISM

The Last Distinction? Talking to the animals By Benjamin Hale

uman beings have long sought Jane Goodall witnessed logical observation has similarly aH definite marker between themselves modifying twigs to root for termites, eroded other distinctions humans and “the animals.” In the 1960s, tool- the naturalist Leakey respond- have claimed for themselves. But making was considered such a ed, “Now we must redefine tool, rede- there remains a tradition—in litera- uniquely human behavior that when fine Man, or accept chimpanzees as ture and philosophy as much as in sci- human.” Since then, other animals— ence—of treating as the Benjamin Hale is the author of the novel The crows, most recently—have been Rubicon that only humanity has Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve). seen making and using tools. Etho- crossed. In Paradise Lost, when Satan,

Photograph of Herbert Terrace holding a puppet while Nim Chimpsky signs the word “hug” © Susan Kuklin/Photo Researchers, Inc. CRITICISM 65

(65-66,68) Hale Final8 REV2.indd_0626 65 6/26/12 10:27 AM disguised as the serpent, begins talk- tends to make language the most sat- four words: “mama,” “papa,” “cup,” ing to Eve, she says in astonishment, isfactory answer. and “up.” “What may this mean? Language of Hence our fascination with feral chil- These early experiments focused on man pronounced/ By tongue of dren—the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Kaspar language production over comprehen- brute, and human sense expressed?” Hauser, Genie, and so on—cases of sion. But anatomy does not readily Animals do not talk. The idea is un- human beings isolated and deprived of allow articulations of the kind necessary natural, satanic. language during the crucial early to speak. The human vocal apparatus Speculation on the origin of human ­acquisition period. What would it be like consists of the larynx, the throat, the language was long discouraged among to have a consciousness but be unable to nasal cavity, the tongue, and the lips— linguists; inquiry into the subject was think in articulate language? For most all of which are shaped differently in formally banned by the Société de Lin- people, to imagine the experience of nonhuman . Chimps’ vocal tracts guistique de Paris in 1866, and the taboo inhabiting such a consciousness is close are shorter and straighter than ours, thereby established persisted for nearly to impossible. The animal scientist with higher larynges. When humans a century. The moratorium, a famous Temple Grandin has written much on speak, moreover, we accomplish what’s incident in the history of linguistics, this subject, asserting that her autism called a velopharyngeal closure by brief- began in the earliest days of Darwin’s lends her a unique insight into the way ly blocking off air to the nasal cavity influence, after the publication of On the animals—cows, in her line of work— with the soft palate, allowing us to ar- Origin of Species but a few years before experience the world: wordlessly. “I ticulate hard consonants. Apes do not the publication of The Descent of Man, think in pictures,” she writes in the have this capability. in which Darwin first explicitly dis- opening pages of her memoir. Even as far back as the 1920s, scien- cussed human evolution—including the tists wondered about the possibilities of Words are like a second language to evolution of language. me. I translate both spoken and writ- gestural communication. “I am inclined Of modern history’s important ten words into full-color movies, com- to conclude from the various evidences,” thinkers, Darwin may be the most plete with sound, which run like a wrote Robert Yerkes, an early American chronically oversimplified. Distortions VCR tape in my head. When some- pioneer of primatology, “that the great of his thinking began not long after his body speaks to me, his words are in- apes have plenty to talk about, but no death. He treated humanity as a part of stantly translated into pictures. Lan- gift for the use of sounds to represent nature rather than over and above it, guage-based thinkers often find this individual . . . feelings or ideas. Perhaps upsetting Europe’s philosophical tradi- phenomenon difficult to understand, they can be taught to use their fingers, tion of the Great Chain of Being: the but in my job as an equipment designer somewhat as does the deaf and dumb hierarchical ordering of all creation, for the livestock industry, visual think- person, and thus helped to acquire a ing is a tremendous advantage. rising in increments toward man’s per- simple, nonvocal ‘.’ ” Rec- fection. This model of life was so firm- It would be absurd to suggest that ognizing that nonhuman apes, though ly accepted that it survived even among because Grandin does not think physiologically unable to produce the those who accepted Darwin’s work, primarily in language she isn’t con- same range of sounds as humans, often leading to a widespread misunderstand- scious, but the importance of lan- communicate gesturally, another psy- ing illustrated by a graphic so elegant guage as a distinct marker between chologist couple, Allen and Beatrix (and so reductive) that it’s become a the human and “the animal” mind is Gardner, of the University of Nevada, pop-semiotic stand-in for the theory of still lodged in the Western Reno, began experimenting with sign evolution: the left-to-right single-file models of consciousness. language in 1966, using as their subject march of an ape morphing into a man, a female chimp named . The with its implication that evolution is a n the Thirties, the psychologists focus on sign language, which resolved teleological progression and Homo sa- IWinthrop Kellogg and Luella Kellogg the main problems of the Hayes experi- piens sapiens the goal. The illustration briefly raised a named ment, was also influenced by Jane Goo­ does less to explain evolution than to alongside their own infant son, dall’s and Adriaan Kortlandt’s ethologi- reinforce the inaccurate (and specifi- Donald. They aborted the project af- cal reports that chimps in the wild have cally Western) idea of a radical break ter nine months, because Donald systems of gestural communication that between humans and other animals. seemed to be picking up more behav- are highly complex and cultural, varying Descartes, who wrote extensively iors from the chimp than vice versa. from one social group to another. on the philosophical problem of ani- In a longer and more involved experi- The Gardners housed Washoe in a mal consciousness, argued that all ment that began in 1947, another psy- trailer in their back yard and enlisted a nonhuman animals are instinctual chologist couple, Keith and Cathy small staff of graduate students to help automata, whereas humans alone Hayes, attempted to raise a newborn teach her . think—cogitant ergo sunt—and there- female chimp named as a human Allen Gardner, a strict experimentalist, fore possess souls. The impulse to draw child. After seven years of home rear- began the study with Skinnerian con- a circle around humanity underlies the ing and intensive vocal training (in- ditioning techniques, which are unde- question “What makes us human?” cluding speech-therapy techniques niably useful in any animal training. The way we phrase the question— such as physical manipulation of the For example, they would wait for Wash- which presupposes that the answer mouth), Viki could articulate, in a oe’s “hand-babbling” to form some- must be a definite thing we possess— breathy and almost inaudible voice, thing that looked like an ASL sign,

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(65-66,68) Hale Final8 REV2.indd_0626 66 6/26/12 10:27 AM then reward her with food or such dis- other student companions.” Being non- Prior to recent scientific advances, plays of approval as clapping, smiling, fluent, the experimenters were probably neural anatomy was a dark frontier, and and tickling. They would refine the sign poorly equipped to teach ASL to a there was no clear evidence for or with further rewarding and try to con- chimp—or anyone, for that matter. against the language-acquisition de- dition her to use it in correct contexts. They were learning signs at the same vice. All we had was Chomsky’s prom- They abandoned these methods not time Washoe was, which meant they ise that it must exist and that it must long into the experiment because were also probably poorly equipped to govern our understanding of grammar Washoe had learned only one sign: interpret them. “Often the project direc- and syntax. Rather than argue with “funny.” , who worked tors themselves were uncertain about Chomsky’s anthropocentric defini- closely with Washoe her entire life, how a particular sign should be made,” tions, some researchers aimed to prove writes in his memoir, , that writes Arden Neisser about Washoe in that an animal could communicate in after the first year of the experiment her book on sign language and the ways that filled out Chomsky’s checklist Washoe picked up signs almost en- deaf community, The Other Side of of what makes language—principally, tirely from watching humans use them. Silence. “By the time it was taught that an animal could come to under- The methodological trickiness of the to the chimp, ‘It lost something in stand and use grammar. Proving that Gardners’ experiment plagued it and translation,’ said a deaf an animal could be “taught” to com- other sign-language experiments to friend ruefully.” municate using language—as narrowly come. ASL is a fully developed lan- conceived by Chomsky—became a guage, with movements and facial ex- he Gardners’ experiment was a holy grail for language researchers. Her- pressions that work together to create directT precursor to the Columbia Uni- bert Terrace sought this prize by way of meaning; what Washoe learned was not versity psychologist Herbert Terrace’s Nim Chimpsky. ASL per se, but a collection of modified whimsically named Nim Chimpsky There is something glib and ASL signs that were fluid and subjective. project, which was beset by many of thoughtless about bestowing on an- Their interpretability became a major the same problems, as well as new other conscious being a pun for a problem. At the outset of the experi- ones, mostly of Terrace’s making. The name. Glibness and thoughtlessness, ment, the Gardners kept records of every most ambitious and publicly visible of as one sees in the documentary, are sign—or near-sign—Washoe made, several sign-language experiments just a couple of Terrace’s winning marking the time she made it, and in with apes throughout the 1960s and traits, and Nim Chimpsky’s name was what context. As Washoe’s vocabulary ’70s, Terrace’s Project Nim is the sub- only the first indignity in a life full of grew and she began signing more fre- ject of a 2011 documentary of the indignity and suffering, which is the quently, data collection became difficult; same name, directed by the Academy main subject of Marsh’s film. soon the experimenters would record Award–winning filmmaker James Terrace, who still conducts research only her use of new signs. In order for a Marsh. Following upon Elizabeth at Columbia, planned to raise a chim- sign to be added to her theoretical vo- Hess’s 2008 book, Nim Chimpsky: The panzee in a human home, with no con- cabulary, three independent observers Chimp Who Would Be Human, the tact with other chimps, and immerse had to document that she made a “spon- film chronicles the chaotic life of Ter- him in sign language from infancy. Just taneous, well-formed, and appropriate race’s subject. days after his birth in Norman, Okla- use of the sign.” That sign then went on , the punny name- homa, in 1973, Nim was taken from his the official list of Washoe’s working sake of both the project and the chimp, mother—who had previously had six vocabulary only once she had used it is never mentioned in the film, which infants taken from her for experiments. spontaneously, articulately, and appro- focuses on the human elements of Nim’s Terrace turned him over to Stephanie priately every day for fifteen days. By this story rather than the scientific contro- LaFarge, a former student (and a former measure, in 1970, four years into the versies surrounding it. This is an odd lover) of Terrace’s, who had generously experiment, Washoe had an active vo- absence, since Chomsky more than any and perhaps recklessly volunteered her cabulary of 132 signs. Although the other thinker upheld Descartes’ torch of own New York home and large family to Gardners tried to be strict with their human exceptionalism in the twentieth take in baby Nim as a foster child. The data collection, skeptical linguists ac- century. Chomsky’s theories of transfor- LaFarges were supposed to begin speak- cused the experimenters of interpreting mational grammar, universal grammar, ing to Nim in ASL within months, their data too generously. “Spontane- and the innateness and human unique- though not a single member of the ous,” “well-formed,” and “appropriately ness of language defined the debate over household knew the language. Stepha- used” are in the eyes of the beholder— language for decades. These theories rest nie’s husband, W.E.R., was a poet with even three independent ones. on the “poverty of the stimulus” argu- a ponytail and a patrician pedigree; they How does one determine whether an ment: language is so complex, and in- lived with a swarm of children from ape has made an ASL sign? Neither the fants learn it in such relatively little previous marriages in a brownstone on Gardners nor the graduate students who time, that it can’t possibly be learned Manhattan’s Upper West Side; and ev- worked with them were fluent in the entirely through external stimulus; there eryone in the picture seems to have been language. “Each week I attended ASL must be an innate language-acquisition smoking a lot of pot. Now add to this classes at the Gardners’ house,” writes “device” or “organ” in the human brain. environment one infant chimpanzee. Roger Fouts, “but most of my learning We were told to look for it somewhere As Stephanie’s daughter, Lee, says came on the job with Washoe and her in the left hemisphere. in the film, “It was the Seventies.”

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(65-70) Hale Final7.indd_0625 67 6/25/12 8:38 AM Herb Terrace comes across so nega- to work on the project. So Terrace alists. Don’t call it anthropomor- tively that one wonders how much called an all-hands-on-deck meeting at phism; the emotions this animal dis- thought he gave before consenting to which he shocked and angered his staff plays are unmistakable: sadness, filmed interviews. Disliked by every by announcing that the experiment bitterness, loneliness, other interview subject, Terrace appears was now over. Terrace had Nim tran- betrayal, rage. irresponsible, smug, careless, cowardly, quilized and flown back to his birth- disloyal, vain, and given to having sex place. Nim went to sleep in his palace arsh’s documentary avoids the with his students. During the experi- and woke up in a hellish place now depthsM that lie beneath Terrace’s bi- ment, Terrace had an affair with Laura- infamous among captive-ape research- zarre, tragic experiment—things that Ann Petitto, who was an eighteen-year- ers for its inhumaneness. could be said about linguistics, the im- old undergraduate when she began “It turned out to be a surprisingly perfect nature of science, and some of working on the project and who became more primitive facility than I remem- the most interesting areas of philoso- one of the most involved of Nim’s early bered,” Terrace says of the compound phy. (Making a film about animal lan- caregivers. Petitto worked with Nim run by University of Oklahoma psy- guage without mentioning Noam while he was still living with the La- chologist and animal breeder William Chomsky is a bit like writing a book Farges (Stephanie LaFarge calls her, Lemmon, which served as a sort of on the French Revolution that ne- with jealousy and a sniff of classism, “a chimpanzee-research hub in the 1960s glects to bring up Louis XVI.) One of cute little thing from Ramapo”), persist- and ’70s. Electric fencing, metal cages, the narratives that remains largely un- ing in her work as the chimp ripped guns, and cattle prods were Lemmon’s told is the devastating effect the exper- apart the LaFarges’ curtains, books, and tools of subjugation; this was a place iment had on the future of research in marriage, and moving with him when where chimps were treated like ani- the field. Terrace secured for the experiment a mals—or rather, prisoners—not like Terrace made himself one of the sprawling Georgian estate in the North spoiled human children. (In his memoir, most powerful enemies of such re- Bronx that was owned by Columbia and Fouts claims that Lemmon wore a ruby search when he declared, in a 1979 had been sitting empty for years. ring that he had trained his chimps to paper in Science entitled “Can an Ape Terrace’s affair with Petitto is note- kiss. But that’s another story.) Nim en- Create a Sentence?” and in a related worthy mostly because it interfered tered this environment having never book, that Project Nim and by exten- with the project. In Petitto’s words, met another chimpanzee other than, sion all animal-language experiments Terrace “abruptly” ended their roman- however briefly, his mother. In the most were bunkum—the wishful thinking tic involvement—a diplomatic phras- affecting moment of Marsh’s film, Ter- of sloppy scientists deceived by their ing that sounds like the shutting of a race visits Oklahoma a year after leaving subjects’ clever and complex ways of cellar door. Whatever happened, she Nim there. Nim recognizes Terrace and begging for treats. Ape-language re- left the experiment, upsetting the bal- erupts with jubilant relief, shrieking and search has yet to recover from Ter- ance of Nim’s emotional life yet again. rushing to hug him. Bob Ingersoll, who race’s public surrender to Chomsky— “It’s the humans I wanted to leave,” says worked at Lemmon’s facility, infers Nim’s a turnaround that felt especially Petitto, “not the chimp.” thoughts on seeing Terrace again: “Holy treacherous considering the inexacti- Terrace’s participation in the experi- shit! I’m going back to New York!” Ter- tude of Terrace’s own science. ment was by all accounts fairly minimal. race left that day, and Nim never saw Many of the problems of Project He showed up for photo ops and his him again. After Terrace’s departure, Nim arose from Terrace’s faithful ac- name was of course listed first on the Nim lay still in his cage, refusing food. ceptance of Chomsky’s syntax-based resulting paper, but he left the bulk of Raspy and long-haired—he wouldn’t definition of language, and from a re- the work to his students. Bill Tynan, look out of place in a Santa Cruz head sulting methodology rooted in another of Nim’s early caregivers, de- shop—Bob Ingersoll was the last and the familiar techniques of second-­ scribes Terrace as “an absentee landlord” most enduring force for good in Nim’s language instruction. The word itself, who only occasionally put in an appear- life at a time when everyone else, includ- instruction, is indicative of a wrong- ance at the mansion where Nim was ing Terrace, seems to have given up on headed way of thinking about the imprisoned in luxury like a mad aristo- him. Ingersoll rallied to get Nim out of acquisition of a first language. Human crat out of some gothic novel. the medical-research facility to which an infants do not really need to be “in- After four years, Terrace abandoned insolvent Lemmon had sold him and structed” in their first language to pick the experiment, largely because Nim’s many other chimps, and again came to it up—this was at the heart of Chom- increasingly violent and unpredictable Nim’s aid after he wound up sequestered sky’s argument in the first place. When behavior—he was, after all, a growing at the Black Beauty Ranch, a rescue Terrace decided that the environment chimpanzee—had created insupport- home for horses in Texas run by an ac- surrounding Nim was too chaotic, he able liabilities. “I was probably worried tivist with good intentions and no clue resolved to have Nim instructed in a that she would sue me,” Terrace says— about how to care for a chimp. There is “classroom” at Columbia. The class- with characteristic bluntness and lack footage of Nim alone in a concrete room was small, windowless, and of self-awareness—of an incident in room, maniacally shoving a metal bar- whitewashed, with nothing in it ex- which Nim grievously injured Renee rel around on the floor. These images cept for Nim, the person working with Falitz, a sign-­language interpreter who are capable of testing the empathy of him, and some drab, minimal furnish- was the only person fluent in ASL ever even the most rigid human exception- ings. The idea was to hone Nim’s

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(65-66,68) Hale Final8 REV2.indd_0626 68 6/26/12 10:28 AM concentration by isolation. We see his Great Ape Trust’s research facility er Hans conference, during which caretakers struggling to maintain his in Des Moines. Many of the bono- he stridently pronounced that “the restless attention. Joyce Butler, one of bos understand not only the lexi- alleged language experiments with his keepers, tells of her realization that grams but also a great deal of spo- apes divide into three groups: one, Nim was making the “dirty” sign—­ ken English. One can view online outright fraud; two, self-deception; indicating that he had to use the bath- videos of carrying out simple three, those conducted by Terrace.” room—simply in order to get out of tasks at spoken request. The experi- “The combined effect of Sebeok’s there. Such an environment makes menter—wearing a welding mask to Conference and Terrace’s little sense for what Terrace and his help prevent unintentional facial Science paper,” Sue Savage-Rumbaugh staff were trying to do: help a con- cueing—might say, for instance, later wrote, scious being acquire a first language. “Put the snake on the ball,” and Decontextualizing language from the Kanzi responds by placing a toy snake was . . . to instigate an extremely rapid everyday in order to foster its acquisi- on top of a plastic beach ball, sug- and violent swing of the pendulum. tion is like putting a seed in a sealed gesting comprehension of verb, word Ape-language research went from being jar to help it sprout. order, and preposition. The room is a field of perceived intellectual excite- The case of Kanzi is a helpful coun- strewn with these various artifacts— ment and public acclaim to one that, at best, should be viewed askance. Sud- terexample. Beginning in the mid-1970s, balls, soap, stuffed animals, water denly, it became extremely difficult to Duane Rumbaugh and Sue Savage- pails, plants—resembling far less have research papers reviewed, let alone Rumbaugh, who had also worked with Nim’s stark isolation chamber than, published. And funding for most of the Bill Lemmon at the University of Okla- say, a nursery: a space including not major projects virtually dried up. homa, began a series of language ex- only words, but things to periments with chimpanzees and, later, talk about. The end of Project Nim marked —a cousin species about which the end of an incautious but intensely relatively little was known at the outset esearchers who conduct lan- curious open-mindedness in the cul- of their research—employing a table of guageR experiments with animals— ture of science that was probably re- invented lexigrams: arbitrary, non- especially complex, social, intelligent flective of a change in culture at large: representative pictures signifying certain ones like great apes—sometimes free-spiritedness was out, and the things (actions, foods, places, the names draw the public’s interest, but after skeptical, cynical Eighties were in. of apes and people involved in the ex- Project Nim they have had a hard Jenny Lee’s remark (“It was the Sev- periment, and so on). One reason for time persuading the scientific com- enties”) not only calls attention to the their creation of the lexigram system was munity to consider their work any- look of the film—all the grainy and to help alleviate the data-gathering thing more than wishful thinking. garishly colorful footage of chimp problems of the sign-language experi- Few have done more to aggravate caretakers, knee socks, bell-bottoms, ments. Whereas both the Washoe and ’s respectability and sideburns—but also suggests that Nim experimenters struggled with ASL problem than Herb Terrace himself. this story could not have happened in and its interpretation, Rumbaugh and For ape language’s skeptics, he pro- the way it did at any other time. The Savage-Rumbaugh had only to decide vided the voice of the disgruntled backdrop of hedonistic abandon be- whether an ape was touching a picture inside man. In 1980, shortly after hind this story may strike a viewer to- that was neatly blocked off from others Terrace published his paper de- day as humorous or appalling. One in a little square, which is a much more nouncing the project in Science, In- wonders how much serious scientific objectively measurable datum. In the diana University linguist Thomas inquiry was going on in an environ- early 1980s, the couple were trying to get Sebeok organized a conference on ment in which everyone was in bed Matata, an adult female , to un- the “Clever Hans phenomenon.” with everyone and Nim was plied derstand and use the lexigrams. Matata The term refers to humans anthro- with booze and pot right from infan- had recently stolen an infant named pomorphizing animal behavior in cy. To watch a chimpanzee puffing on Kanzi from a bonobo in captivity. Kan- such a way as to assume cognitive or a joint is disquieting, in equal mea- zi was either close by or clinging to his communicative processes that aren’t sures funny and disturbing. We enjoy adoptive mother while the research was really occurring. (Clever Hans was a mocking that sliver of biological dif- going on. They never had much luck horse who, his trainer believed, ference between us and chimpanzees. getting Matata to understand the lexi- could answer simple mathematical Yet anyone who has ever looked grams, but later realized that her son had equations, among other things, by with curiosity and respect into the picked up many of their meanings— stamping out solutions with his face of a chimpanzee has seen a spontaneously, and with no deliberate hoof; by isolating the horse from his presence there. If we abandon the instruction. That is, in the same way owner, researchers found that Clev- notion that language is necessarily one acquires a first language. er Hans was determining his “an- the bedfellow of consciousness, we Since then, the experiment has swers” by picking up subtle subcon- get a better understanding of our- expanded along with the group of scious cues from his human—still selves, while our relationship to the bonobos involved in it. It is the only impressive, to be sure, but the horse other beings we share this planet ape-language experiment still ac- was not doing arithmetic.) Sebeok with becomes more enlightened, tive, and is currently based at the invited Herbert Terrace to the Clev- more humble, and more humane. n

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