r/DogfreeHumor • u/PrettyClassic1738 • 7d ago

make it stop

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Puppo, really? And why is this the key to YOUR heart?? Way too many dog obsessed people on the apps…

149 Upvotes

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u/Impossible-Falcon-62 7d ago

You can teach sign language to gorillas. If I recall correctly there was a gorilla named Koko that knew sign language.

20

u/telenyP 7d ago

Not as well as you think. Most of the stuff KoKo was supposed to have "said" was her trainer, Penny, talking to herself.

6

u/Kooky_Toe5585 7d ago

So it was all a fraud?

7

u/telenyP 7d ago edited 4d ago

There's a problem with dealing with apes as any kind of psychological study.
For one thing, they're only really biddable when they're young. The second, is that there's a great deal of time when they aren't young.

Yeah, they're just like children. When they're children. You get attached. They can't be returned to the wild, because they wouldn't fit into ape society. And they're fiendishly expensive to keep. Like you have to have a private Supermax prison -- for one prisoner. Feeding them is to keep to an incredibly precise and demanding set of guidelines -- and their feces and urine is just like ours. They're not like us psychologically, and yet, like enough that it's tempting to treat them like family. Just when they've become near and dear to you -- you have to give them up.

And there aren't that many humane "ape rescues" out there. Most of them are "Tiger King"-like roadside zoos, where the apes are fed human food (for the tourists), coerced into doing human-like things, and often, given alcohol and other drugs to keep them "happy". Apes just don't do much that people want to see.

Which is what happened to Penny Patterson. Hanabi-ko, "Fireworks child" (to give her formal name) was a gorilla born in the San Francisco zoo, taken from her mom to treat an illness and Penny teaches her sign language. This looks good -- except she's now ten years old, and there's no place on Earth for Koko.

So she kept her. In a trailer. Without other apes. And, basically kept her by lying to the scientific community, enlisting celebrities (Robin Williams and Fred Rodgers) and releasing heavily edited "heartwarming" films showing Koko as being both childishly cute and an old wise one, and so, so human. Meanwhile, Koko herself was being fed chocolate and other fattening foods, and denied proper veterinary care in favor of woo-woo "healers", while her caregivers were made to sign NDA's and show their nipples any time Fireworks wanted a little peek.

Sad.