Original subtitles

Koko is a gorilla.

Ally is a chimpanzee.

This is Washoe.

She has already earned a place in the history of modern science.

She was ten months old in 1966

when psychologists Allen and Beatrix Gardner

began an experiment with her that rocked the scientific world.

Washoe is now 12.

She has a vocabulary of about 200 words.

She lives with other chimpanzees on an island

at the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma.

Roger Fouts was formerly the Gardners'assistant.

He was involved from the start

on experiments with chimpanzees using sign language for the deaf.

No one had ever attempted such experiments with gorillas.

Gorillas were thought to be too difficult to handle,

much more dangerous and less intelligent than chimpanzees.

The first birth here was in 1971.

It was Koko, whose mother is shown here.

Koko is available to us only because these gorillas

were taken from their mothers, from their native jungle,

their parents perhaps slaughtered.

Today, the only place where a gorilla is truly safe

is within the concrete walls of a zoo.

In Africa, they're driven out of the equatorial forests

by farmers and lumber companies,

as well as poachers.

Only a few thousand mountain gorillas are left.

Their only enemy is man.

Even though Koko was born in the San Francisco Zoo,

she's still an animal of the primeval forest, an exile.

Koko lives in a suburb south of San Francisco.

This is what's called her cultural environment.

The names of these places - Redwood City, Palo Alto -

serve as reminders that less than 100 years ago,

this area was covered by a huge forest.

On the campus of Stanford University,

Penny Patterson, 28, a graduate student in psychology,

is teaching Koko sign language.

Koko lives in a specially modified trailer.

Penny lives with her boyfriend off campus.

She has no children.

She arrives every morning before Koko wakes up

and returns every night when Koko goes to sleep.

The experiment began five years ago.

Penny hasn't had a single day of vacation since.

Penny's based her work on the Gardners' work with Washoe,

but with one important difference.

Tests for intelligence and vocabulary

are set up in three different ways.

With signs, with words, and with both at the same time.

The alligator is bottom left.

It's the third from the left.

Koko scores slightly lower than a child of the same age.

Gorillas in the wild are generally vegetarians.

Koko eats hamburgers and takes vitamins like any American child.

Twice a month, Koko's life is recorded on videotape.

Twice a week, a tape recorder is used instead.

Every word Koko uses each day is checked off.

Sometimes Koko makes up sentences,

and these too are taken down and analyzed by a computer

that extracts their grammatical structure.

Koko doesn't know what to make of her new yellow sweater.

She wants her old red one.

It was cold that day.

Gorillas are sensitive to cold and easily catch pneumonia.

At four, Koko loses her first tooth.

The event was filmed in Super 8.

This game was thought to have been invented by Koko.

In fact, it's a game played by young gorillas in the jungle.

This time, it's Koko's turn to ask Penny something.

How far can Koko progress?

Koko's health is carefully monitored.

Her urine and blood are analyzed regularly.

Since early childhood, Koko has been in daily contact

with deaf-mutes.

Gorillas reach puberty at six and are fully adult at nine.

Their average life span is 50 years.

When this film was shot, Koko was almost six.

She experienced her first sexual stirrings during the filming.

There's a newcomer in Koko's life.

Michael, a young gorilla of four.

He already knows a dozen words.

At first Koko was afraid of Michael.

Then she became jealous, and then curious.

Now she loves him.

They'll have to wait at least three years

untiI Michael reaches puberty, which comes later for males,

to have children.

Watch this. Koko wants to see Michael.

A lesson in progress.

Koko works two or three hours a day.

Then she gets tired.

Gorillas in the wild live in strict hierarchical groupings.

Each gorilla must obey its superior in the group structure.

Penny, with a place in that hierarchy,

must enforce that relationship or risk danger.

All education implies dominance.

How could Penny avoid transmitting her own values?

Koko may become the first white American Protestant gorilla.

This film was shot practically in secret.

Koko was still the property of the San Francisco Zoo.

The zoo was threatening to send the police to recover Koko.

Penny adamantly refused to give her up.

She was ready to run away with Koko,

or even live with her in the zoo compound.

In the end, the Gorilla Foundation,

which Penny created, bought Koko.

Then we went to see the zoo director.

Is this Koko's rightful place?

Would you have called the police to get Koko back?

Koko doesn't have a voice.

Primates' vocal chords only allow them to emit a handful of cries.

Koko is learning to use a new tool,

a computer that speaks out loud for her.

Every 10 minutes, for several hours a day,

the new machine invites her to its keyboard.

If someone killed Koko, would it be murder?

No. To the law, killing an animal is a mere misdemeanor.

Would a child who behaved like Koko be put in an institution?

But why must man be our only standard?

Is the question whether Koko, because she can speak,

deserves some special status accorded by man?

Or is it a question of an animal's right to live

according to the rules of its own species?

It seems what's been called intelligence no longer designates

only that intelligence in full awareness of itself,

but also that intelligence that lives

spontaneously, unselfconsciously.

In fact, Koko raises all the important questions about man.

One can't decide a priori that only human beings are persons.

One could prove that this gorilla is a person.

In our society, a person has certain rights, limited as they may be.

To grant these rights to primates

is to open the door for the animal world.

Since the dawn of Western civilization,

we've lived with the idea of man created in the image of God,

intrinsically different from animals and nature.

In the wake of Darwin's theory of evolution,

language was the last remaining bulwark for this worldview.