The world's only "talking" gorilla, who knew about a thousand words, dies

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Gorilla Coco became famous primarily for her incredible ability to learn and master new skills: she learned to speak in sign language and learned more than a thousand words in this way, and moreover, she understood more than 2,000 spoken words in English. Coco was perhaps the only animal that had its own pets and gave them nicknames. The life of a gorilla was amazing, but she also came to its end - on June 19, 2018, Coco died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 46.

Coco herself knew very well how special she was - the word "queen" was one of the first she learned in order to describe herself. But what can I say, at certain points in her life, so much attention was paid to her person that she could really argue in her popularity with the royals. So, Coco twice appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine - once with a photo where a gorilla is holding a small kitten, which she named "Ol-Ball" (Coco really liked rhyming phrases), and the second time with a selfie - Coco took a picture of herself in the mirror on the Olympus camera.

Coco belongs to the western lowland gorilla, the most common species in Africa. However, Coco herself was not born free, but at the San Francisco Zoo. Officially, her name sounded Hanabi-ko ("child of fireworks" from Japanese), but the short "Koko" quickly replaced her full name and it was with this name that she became famous all over the world.

When Coco was just a year old, she became part of a research program at Stanford University, in which scientists tried to figure out how lowland gorillas communicate. So, Coco became the ward of Frances "Penny" Patterson, who taught her most of the skills.

It is believed that Coco's IQ was 95, which is in line with the norm of an ordinary person. Of course, the gorilla did not have speech skills and was never able to understand grammar and syntax, but she fully understood what the future and the past were and could communicate with people by her own methods.

The gorilla could well be aware of and describe her feelings, she understood even such abstract concepts as "boredom" and "imagination". When her gorilla friend Michael ripped off the leg of Koko's rag doll, she addressed him in sign language indignantly, "You dirty bad toilet!"

Moreover, Koko knew how to joke. For example, she sometimes called herself "a good bird" and pretended to be able to fly, and then explained that it was just a joke. She could understand the images in the photographs and relate them to her experience. The most famous example of this skill was when Coco, who hated bathing, was shown a photograph of another gorilla being led into the bathroom and said in sign language, "I'm crying there."

Koko also had her own pets - since 1984, the gorilla began to raise kittens. Even among all the possible illustrated books she liked most of all those in which it was told about cats - "Three Kittens" and "Puss in Boots." Once on Koko's birthday, scientists offered her a stuffed toy in the shape of a cat, but Koko was not impressed by this gift - she liked live communication with cats much more. "She was very upset and showed 'sadness' with gestures. The next year, Coco was offered to choose a real kitten - so she had an Ol-Ball, with whom the monkey fussed about, like with its own child.

One day Koko tore a washstand out of the wall, and when she was asked how it happened, Gorilla showed: "The cat did it." Alas, the cat did not live long - he was hit by a car on the road. In one of the documentaries, Francis Patterson asks Coco "What happened to All-Ball?" And Koko replies with gestures: "Cat, cry, I'm sorry, Koko love."

Another Koko kitten named Mu:

Coco's other pets:

Unlike her pet, Coco has lived a long life. Frances Patterson spent 42 years with Coco teaching her, studying the progress and reactions of the gorilla. This project was named the "Coco Project" and became the longest-running study of the way monkeys communicate in history. Usually gorillas live 35-40 years, sometimes living up to 50 years, being in captivity. Coco herself lived to be 46 years old (she would have turned 47 on the fourth of July) and died in her sleep.

Coco Meets Actor Robin Williams:

Gorilla Richard, who lives at the Prague Zoo, is also a star - which is true, not because of his communication skills, but because of his "supermodel" appearance and ability to pose.