Looking at their faces, they are so terribly expressive that it comes naturally to ask ourselves how to communicate with a gorilla. It is possible to do so, indeed, and there are examples and studies that suggest that things will evolve quickly and positively. It is a beautiful story to tell, of dialogue, of comparison, of mutual understanding and domestication between man and animal. It also makes you think a lot about the meaning of the word learning.
How to communicate with a gorilla: history
With gorillas it is possible to communicate thanks to the use of a sign language. The idea is not at all recent, it is almost a century that man has tried this practice and the results are there. We have to go back to 1925 when an American psychologist Robert Yerkes began to think about the idea of making gorillas and humans “talk”. Initially it was just an idea but 5 years later he himself founded a laboratory to study this possibility.
Research after research, we have arrived at the present day with a good knowledge of the behaviors and cognitive abilities not only of gorillas but also of chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, therefore of those species that are part of the hominid family. Yes, the same one to which we belong. By also studying the anatomy of monkeys, it has been ascertained that it is the vocal apparatus that does not allow them to articulate sounds as we can do. Therefore, it is useless to try to train monkeys to speak, there are other paths to take.
How to Communicate with a Gorilla: Experiments
The first real, non-violent experiments to understand how to communicate with a monkey began in the 1960s. The protagonist is Washoe , a chimpanzee, not a gorilla, from 1965, who proved capable of learning sign language by memorizing up to 350 signals. She could understand them all and even used some of them, and taught them to her peers.
She was followed by an orangutan named Chantek, the focus of a research project that began in 1978. He reached 150 signs linked to words but could also combine them to form short sentences. You can’t imagine what kind of speeches, but the fact of creating a connection is significant.
Another interesting subject for studies on how to communicate with a gorilla is a bonobo, Kanzi. We have carried out experiments with him with a keyboard composed of symbols corresponding to words. Like playing the piano, Kanzi has learned to use them and combine them to create sentences and communicate.
Interest in this type of research has had its ups and downs, especially in recent decades, but people have never stopped believing that monkeys are capable of communicating and telling us their “thoughts”.
How to Communicate with a Gorilla: Koko
Koko is a gorilla, finally, and she is one of the most recent interesting cases studied to understand how to communicate with monkeys. She passed away recently but will certainly go down in history for the results achieved in learning American Sign Language, which is usually used for deaf-mute people to talk to humans.
In her 46 years of life, Koko , together with Dr. Penny Patterson, had learned to use a thousand signs, to combine them and form about two thousand words. Her name, if you are wondering, is of Japanese origin but is linked to the 4th of July, a purely American day. Koko was called Hanabiko, at the registry office, which in Japanese recalls the ” fireworks” that exploded on July 4th 1971 in the San Francisco Zoo, the day of her birth.
Koko excelled not only in communication but also in other fields and was one of the few monkeys to pass the mirror recognition test, very difficult for many of her “colleagues”. Many were the studies, when she was still alive, on her vocalization ability, it seems in fact that she made a lot of effort to try to produce comprehensible sounds, with some results, not too excellent, but interesting.
The scientists’ attention had in fact focused on nine voluntary behaviors that required the control of vocalization and breathing and that the monkey had learned, because they were not typical of gorillas. Blowing the nose into a tissue, playing a wind instrument, producing humidity on a pair of glasses before cleaning them with a cloth and miming a telephone conversation. All typically human gestures that Koko learned from us.
Relationships between gorillas
Whether they took inspiration from us, or even surpassed us, we do not know, but recent research is showing that gorillas are capable of creating lasting bonds that are very similar to those of humans. A team of anthropologists from the University of Cambridge think that this attitude is due to the common ancestor between us and gorillas.
By documenting hundreds of gorillas, experts have understood that they also have social interactions with other individuals, a bit like our extended family, where there are uncles, grandparents and cousins. Analyzing the data, it was noted that it is not a question of “blood of my blood” but what are formed are extra social relationships, creating compact groups of long-standing friendships.