All language subtitles for Project.Nim

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The chimpanzee infant left with
his mother is a thing, a lump.

Taken away, he acquires
human psychological

tests, performances which are
well-nigh unbelievable.

Nim was born at the primate
center in Oklahoma

and I went out there to get him.

I had never been near that
many chimpanzees.

It was frightening and intimidating.

And I knew Dr. Lemon and his wife were

watching me to see what kind
of a mother would I be.

Carolyn, Mim's mother, was sitting
right there, holding Mim.

and she knew what was going to
happen better than I did.

She had had six of her previous babies
removed, apparently in the same way.

♪

♪

When the time came to take Nym

from his mother, she instantly

took on this drama, this feeling
of something about to happen.

Dr. Lemon shot her with
a tranquilizing gun.

Then said quick we have to
get him before she falls

over and falls on him She was
trying to protect him

and cradle him So he raced
in and gotten him and

Handed Nim to me and Go back, you

know go back in the other space

♪

♪

He was very dense, unlike a

human baby that has fat.

He was dense and hard.

He didn't struggle.

He didn't try to get away.

He just screamed.

As much as he may be screaming and
protesting, he's also clinging.

He was attaching for dear life.

♪

♪

♪

Wouldn't it be exciting to communicate

with a chimp and find out
what it was thinking?

If they could be taught to articulate
what they were thinking

about, this would be an incredible
expansion of human communication

and possibly give us some insight into
how language, in fact, did evolve.

And that's essentially why
I started Project M.

I don't know what was in his
mind, but he just called.

He was asking me to bring an
infant chimpanzee into my

home, raise this infant as if he

were a child, and see if

he acquired language as a function
of being part of a family.

Stephanie was a former
student of mine.

She had a large family of her own children
and her husband's children.

Was exceedingly empathic
and warm and a

chimp could not have a
better better mother.

I know nothing about chimpanzees
and I never actually sat

down to study them as one could
have, as I should have

perhaps, but my appetite and
my drive to have that

intimate relationship with an animal was,
nothing would have stopped that.

The fact that we could share
language with an animal

seemed like a very radical
possibility at that time.

It had been known for some
time that chimps

aren't able to make the sounds
of human language.

So why not teach him sign language?

The real breakthrough would
be if, like human

children, a chimpanzee could create
grammatical sentences.

So without much preparation
and without really asking

permission of my children, my husband,
I said, fine, I can do it.

I even have the funds to do it with.

We don't need to worry about money.

And so it was launched.

The experiment was launched.

When Nim came to New York, he
was barely two weeks old.

The idea was that he would be treated
in every way like a human infant.

I had recently moved to a brownstone
on the Upper West Side with my

three children and with my husband who
had four children, Weir Lafarge.

Weir was a poet and a writer.

He redefined himself, became what at
that time was called a rich hippie.

new husband, new family, new house.

And I brought Nim into that rather
turbulent situation.

It just happened there was
no family discussion

about should we shouldn't
it was just oh, we're

having a chimp We're going
to teach a sign language

And then the reality of it is
sort of hitting you that

it's really, you know, it's
alive, it's not a doll,

it's not a toy, it's not a
human, it's a chimp, and

it's an amazing, sweet,
little, newborn

baby, needy creature, so...

I think I fell in love instantly.

Nim didn't like Weir.

And Weir didn't like him.

Almost instantly I saw how complicated
this was going to be.

I think Weir went along with it.

It was clearly Stephanie sort of
saying, let's have a chimp.

It was the 70s.

I breastfed him for a
couple of months.

It seemed completely natural.

Everything was about treating
him like a human being.

By the time I had Nim, of course, I
felt very comfortable with babies.

I wasn't prepared at all for the wild
animal in him and the drive.

By the time he was three months old,

I think, and starting
to be ambulatory,

just right there, nothing passive,
nothing passive ever.

♪

You know, I think he figured
that he could just

get in between Weir and Stephanie,
um, on some level.

And we're put his arm around
her and and Nim just you

know Half asleep having a bottle,
you know Turn and bit.

We are on the arm quite hard

He didn't want Weir in the picture.

He wanted Stephanie Alford,
you know, himself.

Weir definitely felt excluded.

Nim had just become part of my being.

That was incompatible with the
role that I played as wife.

Oh

-Herb's coming.
-Herb's coming.

Herb's coming.

Herb's coming was a big deal.

I would just go over and
visit, just to see

what his state was and how
he was getting along.

Herb was infinitely exciting.

I admired his intellect and his goals
and his arrogance, all those things.

That was something.

that didn't sit right
with me about him.

The people that I am the closest
to throughout my life are

people that I have had some period
of sexual contact with.

I don't think that the previous
sexual relationship

between Herb and myself made
a difference to the project

at all, other than it was part of

the glue that allowed it to happen.

Herb didn't come very much.

He wasn't part of the caretaking
package at all.

Young newborn chimps are always raised by
their mothers, not by their fathers.

And I didn't see any way of trying to

change, or any point in
trying to change that.

♪

For better or worse, I had never
regarded him as a child.

I regarded him as an intelligent, personable
center of a scientific project.

I had an implicit faith that
Nim would learn signs.

We had to wait and see.

How do they start teaching
the child to sign?

Does the child just watch
and whatever?

I don't know.

I mean, it was a problem. We were
trying to teach this chimp sign

language and nobody in the house really
was fluent in sign language.

We would mold his hand into
the sign for drink,

which is this, and then give
him the bottle to drink.

♪

It just happened.

It was just amazing.

And I thought, piece of cake.

I was absolutely delighted.

He picked up quite a few signs
after that rather quickly.

Eat, Me, Nim were one of his

first signs, Hug was another one.

♪

And it was as if, then,
okay, we're off now.

We just gotta build up the vocabulary.

As much as we were molding him,
we were molding these

damn hands and all this stuff,
he was starting to mold us.

He knew every dynamic that was
in the room instantly.

He knew when you were
upset, whatever had

happened in whatever, you know,
13-,-year-old's life.

And he would come over, and
he would just come and sit

with you and hug you and then
just kiss the tears away.

It was amazing.

Just unconditional.

He was my lifeline, he was my
buddy, and he was bringing

something out in me, a freedom to
defy expectation and authority.

His greatest focus of defiance
was against Weir.

He would, you know, kind
of pull books off the

shelves, and Weir liked his
books a certain way.

When he saw Weir coming,
he would really do it.

It was very focused,
it was intentional.

Fuck you, I'm touching these.

It was a problem.

Weir was so impotent.

I mean, what could he do?

He'd chase him around, drop that,
you know, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, he won every time.

♪

Nim saw Herb as his next
adult male challenge.

I mean, that is the life that
he's hardwired for, to take

on increasingly powerful male
figures until he's the top.

When Herb would come over expecting
to step in and have

control of Nim, and he couldn't
and didn't, we loved it.

We loved it.

I cornered them.

I just went to pull him out of some
hiding place, and he bit me.

Frankly, everybody in the family got a

kick out of him doing just
what Herb hated.

No one ever put him in
his place, and he

just grew more and more
and more powerful.

And that was exciting to me.

We didn't have to try to control
him in any way, in fact

we enjoyed just letting him hang
out and see how it went.

Stephanie, being the
kind of mother she

was, was not very concerned
about discipline.

It was sort of the hippie mentality,
and I think what

I would tell her would go in
one ear and out the other.

Herb would have wanted a
schedule and structure

and charted progress and
notes and all of that.

I didn't supply that, I
couldn't create that,

and I don't think Nim would
have thrived in that.

♪

♪

I was taking classes at Columbia
University and there was a

small sign that said research assistant
needed course credit granted.

♪

a man opened the door and he
was completely breathless

he also he's one of those men
who was balding on the top

so he had his hair pasted down
but he was so upset and

disheveled that his hair was standing
straight up on one side

He explained it was a language
project and I

immediately understood the
scientific relevance.

NIM was going to test
the nature versus

nurture hypotheses that were
prevailing in the time.

It really was at the cusp of science.

You know, some things are just

immediately obvious about someone
from the beginning.

You know what kind of person you have.

I think she was 18, if
I'm not mistaken.

At the time, Nim was in Stephanie
LaFarge's house,

and my first job was to basically
babysit, to go

to the house and ostensibly
teach him sign language.

She came out of nowhere as a...

cute little thing from Ramapo.

When I got there, I was actually
really surprised.

There was utter chaos.

There was nothing.

This was a scientific project.

There were no journals.

There were no logbooks.

They didn't know who was covering
them, when they were going to be

covering them, who would be teaching them,
when they would be teaching them.

They didn't know what they
were going to teach them.

She quickly felt her power.

It was completely visible.

You know, everybody had
to adapt to it.

She wanted that mother role.

This animal climbed the walls all

♪

ripped apart Stephanie's
house all day.

The kinds of things she was exposing
them to were atypical.

He loved driving fast
in cars, he loved

motorcycles, he loved, you know,
virtually anything thrilling.

He liked alcohol, you'd give him
a sip and he'd want more.

We gave him puffs on a joint.

♪

We didn't have to treat
him like a child.

We could expose him to the sensations
that we enjoyed.

I had an instinctive sense that
something was very amiss

here, that this is not the way

you teach a child language

or you interact with a child or
you teach anything language.

When Nim began to discover my body, my

nakedness, it'd be curious,
I mean, like a

child, he was uninterested, and then
one day he was interested.

I never felt sexually
engaged with him.

There was a sensuality, but Nim
was a, you know, a preteen.

Stephanie was a graduate student
in psychoanalysis.

Her questions had to do with the
Oedipal Complex, and she

was interested in Nim's masturbation
and how he masturbated.

I couldn't believe it.

I realized that I could not do what

I call good science in
Stephanie's home.

It just wasn't conducive to that.

So I set up a classroom at Columbia.

He's gonna take Nim to school.

And I realize I'm starting
to lose my role

as the person who knows the
best what he needs.

We had to get him in a

context that was neutral,
calming, soothing.

I just mapped out a teaching
plan for Nim, and I did it.

She was so enthusiastic about
this that I made her,

in a sense, the director of
education, the curriculum.

I was feeling good about myself.

Also, I was succeeding with Nim.

I could see I was succeeding with Nim.

I can see it.

I can see that no one could
hold a candle to me.

The only thing that mattered to him,
it became more and more tense.

Words, words, words, words, words.

Word order, word order, word order.

He couldn't see anything else.

Herb started seeing the signs
grow on that little graph.

Every day.

Every other day.

Every three days.

Laura taught him another sign.

Laura taught him another sign.

And I just went hell for leather.

Them signing was just almost
exponentially increasing.

I was very happy

Words are a fucking nightmare when it

comes to closeness often And

here I was married to a poet working

for a linguist You know, I was

you know words were the became the
enemy She started restricting

the times we can come in the house

She started throwing us out she

apparently was You know encouraged to
believe that she was now the mother

Stephanie began to threaten
to take Nim away from her.

And Herb started panicking.

I definitely initiated the move
out of Stephanie's house.

I think she was initially
quite resistant to it,

especially since she didn't know exactly
how Nim was going to end up.

God had spoken.

That's what had happened.

That's what was going on.

And we didn't have control.

♪

So, my separation from him
was just as abrupt, in

a way, at that moment, as
his was from Carolyn's.

I was, um, ostensibly
conscious, but I was

♪

I was as unaware and, you know,

-in-charge and helpless as she was.

♪

It was heartbreaking.

♪

saying goodbye.

♪

Part of me did not want
him to learn language.

He was less with language than
he was as his unique self.

♪

♪

At that time, a very lucky
thing happened.

I was aware that there was an estate
that Columbia owned in

Riverdale, a very large estate that used
to be the home of the president.

And I went to him with a
proposition that if he

allowed me to raise the chimp there,
I would pay for the heat.

And I said, sure.

♪

♪

This was amazing.

This was a fairytale.

We got, it was a 28-acre
estate surrounded by

lovely gardens and that allowed
me to put up NIMS

teachers in magnificent surroundings
and not pay any rent.

The wife is good.

Nim got out of the car,
ran up to the front

door, rolled down the hill,
and he was gone.

He was free.

♪

♪

So there was no reaction at having taken
him out of Stephanie's house

He was fine and it was like he
had been there his whole life

♪

He certainly was a different
chimpanzee

in this mansion than he
was with Stephanie.

Um, so I sort of got into more, you
know, interacting with him.

Herb's power as a professor, his

age completely impacted me.

He was my model.

We really clicked together.

I wanted so much to be
a part of his world.

I wanted to be in that
world of academia.

I had strong personal feelings
about Laura.

But I don't think that in any way
got in the way of our science.

♪

Some of the daily bodily
requirements that

Nim had, had to be addressed
and very quickly.

I eventually couldn't handle
the diapers anymore.

He was getting bigger and he was
eating more of our food.

So, pragmatically, I had to
get him off those diapers.

I watched his facial expressions
when he needed the potty

and I began to see it and grab
him and bring him to the

potty He did actually did use
the toilet correctly, but

it was certainly not as Reliable
as what you'd see in a child

The idea was that I would live
with Nim and I would

train him for a certain period
of time in the house,

but then I would bring him in every
day to Columbia University.

This was an experiment to teach or see if
a chimpanzee can learn sign language.

I just thought it was
really interesting,

intellectually interesting,
interesting to

understand how much chimpanzees are
like us and how much they're not.

♪

At that time, he was terribly cute and

getting little photos in
New York Magazine.

There was a daily lesson
plan, if you will.

We were supposed to teach these
particular signs to Nim,

and they were supposed to also teach
him everyday activities.

Dress yourself, undress yourself,
this sort of thing.

Like children, after they learn a few

words, Nim has spontaneously
put signs together.

In many instances, we allow
Nim to use his own signs

that he almost invents, so long
as they're consistent.

For example, this is the sign
for play that he invented.

He's learning signs rapidly.

They're going up, up, up, up, up.

The project was literally humming.

Everything was going very smoothly.

I have a chimpanzee who
was making history.

We did get a grant somewhere
in that time.

The project had begun to enter
the media, so there

was all this excitement and
hype about the project.

We were thrilled.

♪

We've probably all seen performing
chimpanzees on

television or in circuses, but
Nim is no ordinary chimp.

Since he was a few weeks
old, Nim has lived in a

close association with a group
of scientists under

the direction of Dr. Herbert Terrace
of Columbia University.

They're performing a unique experiment
to try to determine

whether apes can be taught to communicate
with humans using language.

How big will he be when
he's full grown?

Oh, he's going to be big.

He's going to be about five
feet tall, perhaps 150

pounds, and supposedly five to six
times the strength of a man.

How are you going to be able
to handle him then?

He had grown, I guess he was probably
something like that.

And he, you know, if you had to hold
him, you really had to hold him.

And he's gone from being
this meek little

huggable toy to quite a robust
young chimpanzee.

♪

His eye teeth were never
taken out, which means

that he's got fangs, essentially,
sitting here.

Extremely strong jaw.

If you didn't assert dominance in some

fashion, you were going to
be in trouble eventually.

He could size somebody
up in two seconds,

whether they were confident
or secretly unconfident.

If I stood up too quickly,
if I accidentally showed

him my back too quickly, if I
had food and I wouldn't...

I didn't think to share it with him,

he'd cross that threshold
and go into attack.

You could tell that he was
getting an attitude.

The hair would go up on his arms, and you
sort of get this look in his face.

When he would bark, I'd feel

it inside, the danger.

He had to lunge, the contact, the
rip, the tear, and the release.

And he had to draw blood.

She did not tell me that
in an alarming manner.

She was just reporting it.

Maybe I was just too,
uh, looking ahead

with blinkers and not wanting
to hear that.

This is 37 stitches.

Um, I had, uh, four here,
uh, nine here.

This one, uh, sent me
into the hospital.

This one actually was the most dangerous
one because he hit a tendon.

♪

It's a lot of work to take
care of an animal that's

not your species, who has that
kind of energy level.

I probably didn't know the difference
between chimpanzees and

monkeys, so I was as blind
and as ignorant

and as naive as probably they came.

I was on a quick learning curve.

I have high energy and enthusiasm
for a goal.

And he was my goal, apparently.

Joyce was a great teacher.

She signed.

She was completely dedicated
and motivated.

She wanted to do this.

This was fantastic.

He bit me really hard, and I bit him
on the ear right then and there.

And I said, that's over, you will never
bite me again, and he never did.

♪

He did like a lot of
human body contact.

Typically when we would leave the property,
he would be really attached to it.

The world would scare him, so
he would always come close.

♪

Bill and I hung tight with them.

We sort of hit it off on a lot
of our different thinking.

She and I got together as a couple.

It helped that we liked each
other and I think that that

helped Nim's life because we enjoyed
each other's company so

we would do things together and we
would hang out as kind of a unit.

♪

Oh, he loves the cats.

He was really, really tender
with the cat, and he'd hold

it, and he just liked the feel,
the touch, something about it.

He, like, would hold her and be,
like, and you could see him,

like, shaking because he'd be, like,
so excited that he had her.

Actually, like, kind of pushed her
down on the ground and then

curled around her and just, like,
laid there, like, I'm in heaven.

♪

I would say that it was fairly
clear that there was

something more going on than the project,
at least from his side.

And I think we all felt it
and we kind of had I

don't want to say resentment
But I was like, huh?

She's what he sort of stopped
this Laura thing If someone

showed me some attention, I thought
it meant that they cared for me

He had power.

I'm sure that, you know, unconsciously
I took advantage of that.

If somebody admires you, why not?

So, yeah, we very briefly
got involved and he

very, very briefly and abruptly
got out of it.

The entanglement completely affected
my decision to leave.

It's the humans I wanted to
leave, not the chimp.

Herb didn't want it to happen.

He went into a very enthusiastic
mode of

trying to convince me not to go.

I wasn't panicked.

I wasn't panicked that
the project was just

going to grind to a halt
because Laura left.

As I recall, Joyce and Bill pretty
much took care of that.

So I didn't lose any crucial
aspect of the project.

♪

I started to go to get
the boxes to leave

and Nim pulled loose from
the person's hand.

He climbs to the second
floor of the house.

Then he must have lunged 25 feet.

He landed on me, he took my head, and

he started pounding it
into the pavement.

It took four males to get him off me.

♪

♪

He wasn't my child.

He wasn't my baby.

You can't give human nurturing to
an animal that could kill you.

♪

One of the easy parts of the project
was to advertise for teachers.

It's like, oh, this is nice.

I didn't set out to have
women on the project,

predominantly, but it certainly
turned out that way.

You know, if that's the way it turned
out, that's the way it turned out.

I was a trained interpreter
for the deaf.

When I set my mind to something,
I get what I want.

I kept saying, I want
to live here, when

am I moving in, when do
I get to move in?

And I would annoy her.

And finally he let me move in.

Probably as time went
on, it may become

more difficult for women
to work with him.

He was gonna take advantage
of the man.

He was big enough and strong
enough that he could I

Mean it hurt his bites hurt
you felt when he bit your

hand He got the nerve and you'd get
a running shock up your arm

We had epic battles, though,
but we made up.

You'd make that face and sign, sorry.

I'd say, well, if I sign this,
you'll forgive me.

I had a relationship with a chimpanzee

and I had conversations
with another species.

It's not just him signing that
was important to me, it

was what he was thinking and
experiencing because we

would talk when we would hang
out, you know, we would

talk about the things we would see,
the things we would hear.

As far as I'm concerned, our
classroom was the house

and the yard and the field
trips that we would take.

♪

Science is a very objective
enterprise.

You can't have personal anecdotes
of how I worked

with Nimma Padilla-Field as
opposed to the classroom.

That's just of no interest
to a scientist.

Joyce did not see anything special
about the classroom.

Hated it.

Hated it. Hated it. He hated it.

We hated it. That's not surprising,
because she didn't

get the results in the classroom
that I was hoping for.

Hey, do you know what time it is?

Yeah. Going into a dungeon
of a classroom, which

it really was, I mean,
the thing was 15 feet

square, including the observation
booth and everything else.

No windows, no place really
to have any activity.

Trying to get Nim's attention
was a bit of a

struggle, and he would have rather
been doing something else.

Pay attention to me.

♪

So this is a sign for
dirty, so we used it

for toilet for him because
it's a contact sign.

He would jump through the
signs that I asked

him to jump through and
then he would have had

enough and he would say I need
to go to the bathroom

Bye.

And that's when I knew,
you little bugger.

You used that sign because
you knew it would

make us leave there and
get us out of there.

♪

He was growing smarter and smarter.

And smarter in the sense of recognizing
situations that he

could take advantage of, when
he could get what he wanted.

♪

♪

He was starting to discover himself.

There was a big rock in the front yard,
and he used to like to bump it.

I don't know.

You're gonna hurt yourself.

That's a rock.

Like, look at himself.

As this whole thing with the
physicality became, you

know, an issue, he was much more
cautious, I think, about

letting the cats around him and letting
him play with the cats.

He would even try to not engage directly
in sexual relationships with

the animals, but definitely to bring
them to him and to his penis area.

And I just said, no, that's not
what they're there for.

We realized, I think all
of us, that it was

becoming increasingly difficult
to pursue the experiment.

Nim was scratching hard, he was biting

harder, biting more often,
biting more people.

We hadn't mentioned the growing concern that
we had about how to deal with Nim.

Dr. Terrace was pretty much
an absentee landlord.

Herb was never alone
with Nim, and Herb

never had to spend any kind
of time with Nim.

Once in a while, you know,
photo shoots for him to

either take photos or for him
to have photos taken of him.

Yes, there were occasional
bites, I imagine they

increased in frequency just because
Nim's getting older.

In that sense, it was becoming
more chimp-like.

But it didn't seem to be a cause
for alarm at that point.

It was the end of July,
it was July 28th and

Bill had him and we did
the-to-body transfer.

I mean you're holding, you're holding
them and the other person

comes up and you just kind of hand
the chimp to the other person.

And I said come on and I got
the tether, you know,

you've got the loop first and
I then tied it to my belt.

Come here and he came over and
he put his arms around me.

He just crunched my face
it just happened

And I grabbed Nim and just dragged
him into the house.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, no, no, no, no.

And I passed that armor with that mirror,
and I saw all this blood.

He had bit through my cheek, almost
to the inside of my mouth.

It was folded over, so you
could see inside my face.

I don't recall if she went
to the emergency

room, but I think that something
like that happened.

It was just it was just bad.

I was probably worried
that you would sue

me Or this would become a public.

This would become public
knowledge about how

Life-threatening the project
might be they couldn't

sew it because of the infection
and a risk of

infection So I had an open gaping wound
on my face for three months

♪

♪

And when I got out of the hospital, I

said, you know, I I want
to see him he went.

Oh And he went to reach
for my face again.

Well, that's it.

I don't need closure now.

I'm out of here.

I was

I'm tenacious and I didn't
want to let go.

Sort of like breaking up
with a bad boyfriend.

♪

I was sorry that it came
to that but you just

don't know how NIM is going
to change and you just

can't count on having outstanding
teachers all the time.

♪

I felt I was spreading
myself too thinly and

experiencing too much stress and
not enough good results.

Nobody keeps a chimp for
more than five years

because at five years they
don't know their own

strength and they can do a
lot of damage to people.

♪

He called us together and dropped
the bomb and said it's over.

I was one very angry

You don't say, we're not
doing this anymore.

And because Herb had that
card to play, he

played it because he was
in the power seat.

♪

I think I said there's no point of
this going on scientifically.

I felt that NIMH had progressed
a lot and we

hadn't had a chance to really
analyze our data.

I just knew that we had reams of data.

This whole mass of data that
needed to be organized

and that was going to be a
long and tedious process.

The fundamental question was, can
a chimpanzee create a sentence?

I don't think I had any definitive
conclusion to that.

We had to wait and see.

It's kind of like, you know, you
get you're almost there and you

feel like there's gonna
be a conclusion

and It's like okay It's over

I thought that the surroundings
in which he was born

would provide the most psychological
support for them.

I felt the basic needs would
be taken care of.

So, once I got the lemon to agree
to take it back, that was it.

I hope he'll be okay.

That's why I want to go with him.

I hope that I'll be able to introduce
him to his new life,

but still have an old part of his
life with him, namely me.

And he can get used to it, and I can
fade out, and he'll be fine.

It won't just be an abrupt break
between old and new.

♪

♪

♪

♪

and we'd getting him up
early one morning.

He gets a shot and he's out.

I chartered a plane and hired a pilot.

and then was given tranquilizers
to reduce

the possibility of his
getting out of hand.

If he was tranquilized, he'd
be easy to control and not

do any damage to the plane, which
could be quite dangerous.

So that's how we get him to Oklahoma.

It was just a nasty...

Very deceitful.

The question is what was going
to happen in Oklahoma,

♪

didn't have any sense of that
so that was my concern

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

Holy shit, was my first thought.

And I think his reaction
was, holy shit, too.

Like he knew we were,
he knew it was bad.

And he'd never seen a chimp before
and he was holding on tight

You look around, you
see cages, and you

hear the sounds of a
lot of chimpanzees.

Would I have envisioned
this when I started

this project, that he ever
would end up there?

No.

It turned out to be a surprisingly more
primitive facility than I remembered.

Because our cages were cages.

They weren't just a room
with a locked door.

They were cages.

I mean, it looked like a prison.

Really stark, ugly, dark, dank prison.

They had a chain around their
neck with a lock.

Should you get into a bad fight, you

could grab the chain and
keep them off of you.

It was like prison behavior.

We had to put up an electric
fence around the island

because we had had several
murders and two suicides.

They'd just push them
out into the water.

Chips can't swim.

Dr. Lemon ran the place.

I had an immediate horrible reaction.

He walked around with a cattle prod.

I remember trying to push him away because
I knew what he was going to do.

And he was screaming and holding
on to me very tightly.

And the only reason he let go was

because he got stabbed with
the electric prop.

Come here, Mac.

Mac, come here, Mac.

Come here, come here.

The reasoning behind the whole Mac-Nim

interaction was that Mac
was not dangerous.

He was small, so he was

not an aggressive, dominant chimp.

So he was the perfect one
for Nim to start with.

-Oh, she's coming.
-Hey, do it.

-See ya, man.
-See ya.

-Hey, Mac.
-Uh-uh.

Bah.

Oh

How did you expect Nim to react to his
first meeting with another champion?

I think what happened was
that Nim was very

apprehensive about Mac and
he took his time and

then when he was ready, you know,
he and Mac got it off.

I feel very good about this, because
I can leave now knowing

that Nim has a friend, and he's
going to worry less about his

human companions, and have at least
one other chimp to turn to.

It was time to leave, and that's when
I took him and put him in the cage.

Sure, I didn't want Joyce doing it, so I
just said, well, I'm gonna go do it.

I didn't want Terrace doing it.

Um, so... I just decided
I was gonna do it.

You know we coaxed him down there
and then Because he trusted us.

I just let him in there and took
the lead and tied it around the

far end of the cage and Say goodbye
and walked out and shut the door

♪

♪

He was sort of hooting and trying
to come after me because

he didn't really know where he
was, but I just walked away.

And that way it wasn't like an Iran.

♪

♪

♪

♪

I did feel badly.

I felt in a certain basic sense
that was not the right

thing to do to somebody, you
know We've been part of

my life for so many years And
that I was definitely

doing Something that he somehow
would feel was unjust or wrong

♪

He had a little doll or something
that I think I left.

♪

♪

I strongly believe that we made a commitment
to him, and we failed.

We did a huge disservice to
that soul and shame on us

Assumed, I guess, wrongly,
that Nim was gonna

come back and he was gonna
be celebrated in the

sense that he was gonna be
the Great Signing Chimp.

No, exactly the opposite.

Exactly the opposite.

Nim in the cage.

No special treatment.

No yogurt.

No granola.

No...

None of that.

It's pretty traumatic for the chimp.

They curl up and lay down.

They lose interest in food,
they're just...

♪

It was a bad start with them,
and I the chimp is very

upset And he just looks at me,
and he jumps and lunches me

and bites through an artery right
in here I Did use a small shop?

He had to grow up and not be a
single spoiled child anymore.

So you gotta socialize, work on
his chimpanzee and manners.

♪

♪

Everybody needs a job,
meaning and purpose.

♪

Had them out, they would
help me in the big

kitchen where we prepped
our food and did stuff.

They'd sweep.

Nim was an impulsive hand washer.

He'd do dishes.

Vanessa liked to dust.

Little Mac liked to clean
cages and wear my boots.

This was a special group of chimps,
you know, they weren't

ordinary chimps, you know, they had the
capacity for higher consciousness.

Terrence came back a year later.

Herb arrived with still photographers
and cameras and that sort of thing.

It was a shoot and it was
arranged as such.

And there was no question that he was very
happy that he could see me again.

There was no anger that, why
did you leave me here?

It was just, hey, that's great,
I want to see him again.

You could see that he was like, holy
shit, I'm going back to New York.

It was like that.

Like he was going to be rescued.

It was kind of sad.

I played with him.

We got into games of signing.

I remember I got him to sign hug.

I got him to sign herb.

In fact, I can get almost
any sign out of him.

I didn't have to go through a drill.

So it was a very entertaining,
comfortable afternoon.

No bad behavior of any kind.

At the end of the day, Lexetta's watch
gives me nimback and flies off.

And it's gone.

Next morning, he barely ate.

He just started to crater.

Herb never came back.

I thought, I'm gonna become
Nim's friend, and

I'm gonna hang with Nim, and
we'll see what happens.

I mean, there wasn't
much I could do for

him, in terms of the cage,
but get him out.

Oh, you saw that, huh?

See you later, Nan.

We just liked each other right off,
and sometimes it's like that.

♪

♪

chimps aren't humans.

You have to kind of understand
chimps to be able

to understand how to work with
them and be with them.

♪

I took him out on walks,
I didn't bring food, I

didn't do the kind of things
that would interrupt

the relationship or the building
of the relationship.

you know he grows on you quick.

He was so charming.

I mean it didn't occur to me that

animals had that kind of
personality like ours.

And you had to be two of heart.

You had to be two of heart.

If you had dark places in
you, they'd know it.

They wouldn't like it.

Good morning. With us this
morning is Dr. Herbert

Terras, a professor of psychology
at Columbia University.

For several years, Dr. Terras was
in charge of an experiment where

he and several other human beings
tried to teach a chimpanzee

named Nim, the sign language of the
deaf, but now in a book just

published, which is called Nim, you're
saying, Dr. Terras, that

these experiments don't prove as much as
you had originally thought they did?

I changed my mind about the data.

♪

I suddenly saw what the
key to this was.

Nim was a brilliant beggar.

He learned how to beg, and he
could work his teachers and

always get what he wanted by moving
his hands in different ways.

And most of the time, he moved
his hands in the ways that

the teacher suggested, and the
motive of his signing was

not to say, What a nice cat you have
over there, but I want it.

When the experiments were over,
you returned Nim to the

primate colony where he was born,
and a year after that,

you went back for a visit, and
we came along with a camera.

You and he are talking in sign
language here, right?

Right. And here we have
it in slow motion.

What's Nim saying?

He's saying, Give Nim banana.

Why is it that you're saying that he
can't speak like a human being?

Well, a string of signs is not
necessarily a sentence.

You can learn a list of words
by rote, and that

says nothing about your ability
to use a grammar.

Aren't you very disappointed that you spent
all this time and all this money?

Well, it would have been very electrifying
news, almost like

communicating with a creature
from out of space if I could

show that another organism could use
language the way humans have.

-But it didn't work.
-It didn't work.

Thank you very much, Dr. Terrison.

I hope somebody can still
talk to Nim and Annie.

I didn't care about the language

argument after a while, it
didn't matter to me.

He might not have had sentences
or grammar, but there's no

question that there was communication
going on, and I saw it clearly.

He talked about the trees, the
berries that he found.

He liked to play.

Favorite song, play.

Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Holy shit, he doesn't know
which one to grab.

He knew what pop was, or
hash, or whatever.

And, uh, he wanted to smoke a joint.

stone,

smoke.

Now.

When we went out on walks with
Nim, Nim was one of us.

If we smoked a joint,
he smoked it with

us, in a circle, and we
handed it to him.

Chimps are like us.

They're hedonistic. They like
to do pleasurable things.

They like to, you know, they like to
have fun and hell, who doesn't?

And there's something
in marijuana that...

They weren't aggressive.

You talk less, you do
different things.

You enjoy each other.

Lily and Nim lived together
in the pig barn.

Both of them didn't have many chimp

friends, and then they became friends.

♪

They were seen copulating
and we think Nim

might have been the father
of Lily's baby.

♪

♪

The best time of my life.

I still say that I've never
had such a good time

except maybe at a Grateful
Dead show Pretty close.

I don't even know which one
I actually being with Nim.

I'd rather be with Nim than
Jerry And that's for me.

That's that's saying something

-That's real?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a banana?

You want to eat the shit?

That's a shoe.

This is a bear shoe.

And that's when Mahoney
started showing up.

He was standing around, looking
at chimps and writing in his

pad and whatever, and when someone,
when I found out who he

was, and I'm sure it didn't take long
for me to figure it out, I was...

Obviously, he was checking out
the chimps for the lab.

LEMSIP is best known by its
acronym,-I-P, which is

Laboratory for Experimental Medicine
and Surgery in Primates.

He represented the devil to me.

Most of the work that we did with the
chimpanzees, for example, was

testing various candidate
vaccines for,

like, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis
C, HIV, AIDS.

I think it's very difficult
to fund the kinds of

research that I happen to be
very much interested in.

It's been difficult to fund social
research in general.

We heard about Dr. Lemon's problems,
which were financial.

It was finally arranged that, yes, we

would take a very large
part of their colony.

I thought Lemon was trying
to scare the university.

I thought they would go, Oh, gosh, you
can't just hold a medical lab.

We've got to do something.

I thought the community
would rise itself up.

Bob and I tried so hard
with public appeal for

something for the chimps, and
there was no response.

And then shortly after that, the
chimps were indeed sold.

♪

Of the chimps that are being
sent off to the lab today,

how many of them were subjects
of the signing research?

Only one was restricted
to signing research.

This is NIMM.

As a chimp you've got no way of knowing
what's happening to you.

You're just suddenly cut off from
seeing everything outside

Suddenly after a day and a half
of constant driving you

you get out the other end and you're
in another sort of room

I wouldn't say they were
jumping with joy

to find themselves in a new place.

Come on, come on, one more
time, one more time.

I took on the role of being
the one who chose

which animals would go into
which types of study.

And I hated it

You want to go away with Spike?

Tulip?

These animals will be used on hepatitis
vaccine safety tests.

It is a federal law that before
a new batch of vaccine can be

released on the American market, it
must be tested for chimpanzees.

There's no way, in all honesty,
there's no way you can

carry out research on animals
and for it to be humane.

It can't be humane because you
already put them in a cage.

That was already the first step and
from there on it's downhill.

We realized that certain
of the Oklahoma chimps

could use sign language and were
trying to sign with us.

What we did was we wrote down
on sheets of paper, which we

posted all over the place on doors
and walls and everywhere we

could find, of certain signs and
it was hoped that as time went

by, everyone would pick up at least
a certain amount of sign language.

I didn't see Nim as special

above anyone else in the

group because they were all going
through the same thing.

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

I made a big, big stink about
it in every way I could.

I called the press.

We bitched as much as we could.

♪

♪

The student, Bob Ingersoll,
he used to hound me every

chance he got and I would start
to get really annoyed.

And then it dawned on me that he
was the only one who cared.

Nobody, nobody except
the press helped us.

Is there anything that
you would consider

doing to prevent what is
going to happen to him?

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can
do because legally Nim is not mine.

Nim was loaned to me for the
duration of my project.

That project ran out of funds.

♪

Somebody at the Boston Globe told me to
read the front page story on that day.

He said, I think you'd be interested
and I know you take unusual cases.

As a human being, I thought
it was a kind of esoteric,

unique form of animal cruelty,
all the worse for that.

And as a lawyer, I thought it
was just plain illegal.

If the facts are, as I'm being told,
that this young chimp was

brought up from infancy in a human family,
you can't stick him into a

little cage in some horrible medical lab
and use him for medical experiments.

It's per se animal cruelty.

Early on, I decided this.

If this animal has been deliberately
brought up from

infanthood to think of himself
as human, then if I'm

going to represent him, I have to
treat him like a human client.

Give him his day in court.

Henry and I, Mr. Herman, were in communication
pretty much every day.

He used a really cool
strategy, actually.

He said, hey, this chimp
can speak for himself.

Let's bring him into court
and let him talk.

What I had ready as a trial exhibit
was a steel cage and a

couple of strong guys with a pole
ready to carry it into court,

and I was gonna get Nim to go into a
frenzy and signal out, out, out.

And I believe the judge said
something to the effect

that I'm not letting a fucking
chimpanzee come in here

and make a mockery of my courtroom
or something to that effect.

And that's when I said
I'm gonna bring in

effect a habeas corpus petition
on behalf of Chimp.

Bring him to court.

Our opponents were pig-headed,
but they weren't stupid.

They realized that win, lose,
or draw, once I got into

court, they'd be losing, because
even if the judge

refused to hear them, the media attention
would have been devastated.

And the dean of the medical
faculty said, That's it.

Get that chimp out of here.

Before anything could happen,
swooping down

like in some Wagnerian drama,
comes Cleveland Amory.

I want this to be a place where
those animals that have

been abused, that have been
misused, will finally and

forever have a place that they never
will have to fear again.

Mr. Amory had, up until then,
perhaps a well-deserved

reputation for doing important
work for animal rights.

And he just went and buys the chimp,
takes him to his black

horse ranch, or whatever it was called,
and says, I am saving Nim.

Lead Len Amory to the rescue again.

Nim will live here for the
rest of his natural life.

Here my story ends, my troubles
are over, and I am at home.

And that's what it says as you drive
into Black Beauty Ranch.

He was the only animal we ever
bought, and we didn't

know a thing about chimpanzees,
but we just thought it

was better, what we could do was
better than where he was.

It was never meant to be a
home for caged animals.

It is really a home for abused
and abandoned equine animals.

That's animals just with hooves.

♪

We were aghast that he would
just pick up this chimp,

transport him to a horse ranch
somewhere in the middle of

nowhere, and there was nobody there who
knew how to take care of a chimp.

We brought him to Black Beauty
and built a house for him.

It was a big kind of a square
place and it had a

porch outside so that he
could go outside and he

had all sorts of toys to play
with, but it was solitary.

Chimps are social animals,
and you can't just put

one chimp in a box and expect
everything to be cool.

♪

Some of the time was sitting
like this in the

corner and you just thought
what is he thinking?

What is he missing?

What can we do? Will
you please be sure

to stop off here in the
nation's capital?

We had a TV down and then he broke
that and then we put one

up in the ceiling and he found
a way to get there Well,

okay, you don't get a television if
that's gonna be your attitude

I wrote letters to Cleveland,
bitching at him

about how leaving Nim there alone
was virtually torture.

Not only did they not
care what I thought,

they wanted me as far away
from them as possible.

And they wanted to make
that pretty clear.

And they did make that pretty clear.

You know, if you come here,
you'll be arrested.

♪

I felt it, you know, and I just

wanted to, like, I don't know, I...

♪

♪

He got out a number of times.

What he wanted to do was
go in the ranch house.

Be in the ranch house, be with
people, sleep in a bed.

We had a bed for him in his house.

We never slept in the
bed in his house.

One time when he came in
the house, there was a

little white poodle thing
and just barked and

barked and barked at this Chimpanzee
coming through the door.

He just picked it up and swung up against
the wall He meant to shut the dog up.

But of course he killed the dog There
was another time when he went

in the house and he picked up a chair
and threw it through the window

♪

This this is a very miserable
chimpanzee, you know

He'd had such a checkered
life and he'd

gone from here to here to
here to here to here.

They should be left.

They should not be taken away from
their mothers in the first place.

I knew that Nim was there.

I didn't know anything about the
quality of his life there.

I heard good things and
bad things and so on.

And I thought, why not go?

So we all flew out to
Texas, we go to the

ranch, we meet the people
taking care of him.

He was alone, he was the
only chimp there.

I happened to be looking at him
when Stephanie got out of

the car and he saw her and he recognized
her right away and

The look on his face was just oh
now you come now you come now.

I've been through all this
and now you come

He definitely recognized us whether
he was happy to see us.

I don't know

He wasn't particularly attractive to me
now that he was an adult chimpanzee.

I didn't have a, oh, isn't he beautiful
or anything like that.

He was, he was, I didn't know him.

My mother decides that she wants
to go into the enclosure with

him, which didn't, which happened sort
of, I'm going to go in with him.

We said to her, he doesn't
look like he's going to

welcome you, so maybe you shouldn't
go into his facility.

I was curious.

Is he going to sign? What's
going to happen?

What's it going to be like?

Stephanie, please don't go in there.

He's not in a good mood.

You know, you can tell he's
not in a good mood.

I opened the gate and walked in.

And then went up to the,
like, first and a

half story, something like
that, pretty high up.

And I realized how much
danger I was in.

He came down, and then it was a blur.

Grabbed her by the ankle and
he starts dragging her

running back and forth literally
like a rag doll

just pulling her back forth I
think he's gonna kill her.

He was gonna swing her against
the wall and then swing her

against the wall again There was nothing
loving about he was furious

I remember being in discussions about

getting the gun or not getting
the gun, yeah.

So they got a gun.

No, he's not gonna kill her.

He's just really pissed off

Things dissipate and he sort of
wandered off and I was able to

get out of door I have no idea how
long the whole thing lasted

The fact that he didn't kill her
meant a lot because he could

have And he would have been dead because
they would have shot him

♪

I had abandoned him and he
had managed to grow up

and I had walked back in as if
I had not abandoned him.

And he said, no, this is
my space, I'm going to

put you in your place, but I'm
not going to hurt you.

We had done so much damage,
removing him

from what his life should have been.

We exploited his human-like nature without
regard to his chimpanzee nature.

We were co-opting him right
from the beginning.

It was wrong.

About a year after Nim was
sold to the fund they

purchased a female chimpanzee
to be with him Around

ten years after that I heard
she was in failing health.

I was worried that Nim was gonna
be on his own again That same

time I was told that a new guy had
taken over the ranch and his

name was Chris Byrne And so I approached
Chris about visiting Nim

And once I met Chris,
I was really, really

reassured that things were going
to be much better for Nim.

Look, Nim.

Somebody's come to see you.

Oh, he's got his tackles up.

-Hey, it's okay.
-Hi, Nam.

What's up, bud?

Nam. He's gonna do a couple of
minutes of this for you.

Oh, that's okay.

Nam!

What's up, bud?

Yeah, I know, buddy.

Who am I?

Who am I?

Hey, who are you?

Play, play.

Oh, damn it.

I said to Chris, I have a way
to help you and I know I

can help you to get out of the
chimps So let's work together

Things are improving.

Things are way improving.

It's taken a while, though.

It's taken a long time.

I've had many easy moments.

On August the 10th, 1995,
the dean of NYU Medical

Center announced that the
Clemson would be closed.

And I thought, I'm gonna
try and save as many of

the chimps as I can, but in a
very quiet way, secretly.

Hey, Lulu.

What's up, girl?

How you doing?

That's where Bob came in through
the secret network.

What's up, Nim?

Who is this over here?

Who is this over here, Nim?

Who is it?

This is gonna be your new roommate.

I love you.

so I can get you down to work.

Okay, we'll do it.

How do you think, Midge?

I told you it would be nice, didn't I?

Jim Mahoney moved literally
50, 60 chimps.

And we did indeed get two chimps from

Lemsep through Mahoney to
Black Beauty Ranch.

Midge was a youngish adult male

and Lulu was very gentle.

Lulu immediately went to her
defense, and Nim came over.

Very good, Lulu.

She's so good.

Yeah, you're a friend, Lulu.

I think Mitch and Lulu really
helped him out enormously.

-What?
-Now you're making noises for it.

What's the name of this?

Hey, I'm Nims.

-Nims what?
-What?
-Soda pop?

I'm not... Things were as good
as could be expected

based on everything you know
that had gone on previous.

Oh, yeah, that's so good, Nim.

Isn't it good?

It wasn't exactly perfect, but
it was pretty damn good.

♪

♪

Chimps are truly wonderful animals,

they're very forgiving the
vast majority of them.

♪

they'll forgive you.

♪

♪

♪

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