
Koko, a gorilla who could do sign language, has died at 46 - eplanit
https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/21/famous-gorilla-koko-sign-language-died-age-46-7648488/
======
YeGoblynQueenne
>> The popular gorilla, known for her extraordinary mastery of sign language,
has passed away at the age of 46.

About the "extraordinary mastery of sign language", wikipedia has this to say:

 _As with other great ape language experiments, the extent to which Koko
mastered and demonstrated language through the use of these signs is
disputed.[4][5] But it is generally accepted that she did not use syntax or
grammar, and that her use of language did not exceed that of a young human
child._

(...)

 _Following Patterson 's initial publications in 1978, a series of critical
evaluations of her reports of signing behavior in great apes argued that video
evidence suggested that Koko was simply being prompted by their trainers'
unconscious cues to display specific signs, in what is commonly called the
Clever Hans effect_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_\(gorilla\))

~~~
ThemalSpan
First, let me clearly state that I agree that the "science" surrounding Koko
was not great, and that her language abilities are consistently overstated.

However, as someone who has met Koko I can also tell you that there is
something there. She did not have a human mastery of sign language, but was
capable of communicating new and unique ideas. It was remarkable to witness.
She was a genuine friend to those who knew her well. As with most things the
truth is somewhere in the middle, right?

~~~
lambda
How many of these "new and unique ideas" could be attributable to Koko and not
her handlers? Almost all interpretations of what Koko's signing means come
from her handlers, not from neutral observers.

Dogs can be trained to recognize hundreds of words, perform many tricks based
on hand gestures, can engage in different body language to indicate different
things that they want at the time, and can show true affection to their human
companions or other pets in the house.

What bothers me most about Koko is that she has been presented as something
entirely different than a smart, well trained dog; that she has some deeper
understanding of language and can combine words in novel ways, but the
evidence really looks like there's a lot of cherry picking and prompting by
the researchers to get at that.

~~~
asciimo
Why does it bother you that another animal might understand language?
Everything humans have we got from our animal ancestors. Is language
different? Is it divine?

~~~
weberc2
You're misrepresenting the OP. They were perfectly clear that they weren't
objecting to the conclusion, but the poor, cherry-picked evidence that was
used to support the conclusion. You can disagree about the quality of the
evidence, but please don't put words in others' mouths.

~~~
trhway
>You're misrepresenting the OP.

no. The OP's "entirely different" is that religious dogma of "only humans have
soul". Poisoned by the human exceptionality dogma over thousands of years,
people refuse, implicitly and explicitly, the continuous incrementality of
evolution and continue to cling to the divine-based "entirely different" like
a drowning man clings to the flotation device.

~~~
lambda
The "entirely different" part is about specific claims about language.

There are many different ways animals are able to communicate with each other,
and with humans. Sounds, gestures, songs, body language, scents, and so on.

They can get quite creative, they can be used to communicate emotion, they can
indicate that the animals have some sense for the mental state of who they are
communicating with, and so on. Almost all of this is fairly obvious to anyone
who's ever owned a pet (though there are plenty of cases in which there can be
some subjective bias there, so it can be good to devise better tests if you're
really skeptical).

But none of them have been demonstrated to have the arbitrarily complex,
abstract, compositional nature that human language does; in which a finite
(but large) set of words or signs can be strung together in arbitrarily
complex ways, allowing a countably infinite number of different ideas to be
potentially conveyed.

This is qualitatively different than any other communication method that has
been demonstrated in other animals.

There's no dogma about it; it's just something that is unique to humans, as
far as we know, just like the amazing ability to manipulate skin color and
texture is something that's unique to cuttlefish. There are some things that
certain kinds of animals can do that other kinds of animals can't, like
flight, breathing via water or air, producing venoms, and so on.

It would be a pretty big scientific breakthrough to discover that there was
some mammal that could change its skin like cuttlefish, or to discover that a
mammal could be trained to breath water.

Likewise, discovering that non-human animal can learn a human-like language,
with its arbitrary complexity through compositionality and ability to express
abstract thought, is a pretty big claim too. The problem is, some people make
this claim, without sufficient evidence to back it up.

~~~
trhway
> to discover that a mammal could be trained to breath water.

this was done to dogs back in 20th century. The water was saturated with O2 to
high levels. Again, the difference isn't the divine-granted qualitative
"entirely different", it is just about continuous incrementally changing
quantity.

~~~
lambda
That's not training dogs to breath water, that's altering the water to be
breathable by dogs.

If you want to look at it that way, nothing is qualtitively "entirely
different." We can all breath water to different degrees, and if you go down
that route, then there's no real qualitative difference between mammals and
fish, right?

Saying that these differences aren't qualitative and are just difference of
degree isn't really a useful way to have discourse. There is absolutely a
qualitative difference between how respiration works in mammals and fish, and
just because you can manipulate the environment in some way to make it work
doesn't change that.

Language is in the same way qualitatively different than other forms of
communication, just as mammals are qualitatively different than fish.

Humans can communicate in language, and can communicate other ways. If I go to
China (and I don't speak Chinese), I can buy food by pointing to it and having
someone hold up their fingers to signify the price. I'm not communicating
through language, but I have communicated effectively.

And you wouldn't call what I did there sign language; it is not a consistent
set of signs shared by a group of people which can be composed into an
infinite number of sentences with arbitrarily complex meanings. It is instead
a fairly limited method of communication which can be used to communicate a
fairly direct concept, I need that thing, along with a response that simply
indicates a number for how much is expected in payment.

I don't know why you keep on referring to the distinction I'm making here as
"divine-granted." I'm simply making a distinction between language, and
communication that is not language.

------
kevinmchugh
Hopefully this is the end of experiments on animal intelligence run by a
closely involved researcher-caretaker over the course of many years.

There's little evidence published about the research topic, great monetary
expense, and there was also the human cost, where the lead researcher on the
project likely sexually harassed her subordinates, claiming that the gorilla
had demanded to see the subordinates' breasts.

here is the definitive takedown of the enterprise:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/koko_kanzi_and_ape_language_research_criticism_of_working_conditions_and.html)

~~~
jonhendry18
"claiming that the gorilla had demanded to see the subordinates' breasts."

I dunno, if a gorilla wants to see your nipples, are _you_ going to feel safe
saying no?

~~~
kevinmchugh
I'm not going to feel safe performing sexual favors in the office regardless
of a gorilla's presence.

If my boss tells me that I may suffer violence for not performing sexual
favors, I'm going to sue my boss.

------
psynapse
When I was a kid, my parents kept a bookshelf with a vast library of National
Geographic issues. I used to read them at random in idle periods, and I
specifically remember the Koko's Kitten edition.

I never realised that she was still alive.

Makes me wonder though, in the internet age when people aren't in the habit of
giving over large physical spaces to things like Nat Geo or Encyclopedias, how
much getting information in this mode is diminished; as opposed to dog-on-
surfboard social media snippets.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think the modern equivalent is the wikidive.

I too lament the lack of a huge library at home, but I'm not worried about
other people losing this. The kind of people who consume nothing but funny cat
videos aren't typically the kind of people who would stock their home with
reference materials anyway, right?

------
thorin
Time to re-read this...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_\(novel\))

~~~
undershirt
I didn't realize Daniel Quinn died in February

------
Angostura
Koko, a gorilla who some claimed could do sign language, has died at 46

~~~
xutopia
I don't know how anyone who would watch the videos of Koko interacting with
her human friend could think what you state. To me it's undeniable that Koko
is indeed using sign language to express herself.

~~~
yanslookup
You are convincing yourself of what you want to see. Yes, Koko could reproduce
various signs with her hands, but she did not have anything near language.

~~~
srean
Can you prove or disprove that she did not have a language ?

~~~
smt88
I'd say the burden of proof is on those who claim she did have language.

If you watch the videos, her interpreter takes very simple words, changes
them, adds context, turns them into longer sentences, and basically forms
Koko's language for her.

I firmly believe Koko had complex and nuanced thoughts and desires, but I
don't believe the interpreter was practicing science or interpreting honestly.

There's evidence of this in the sexual-abuse allegations against the
interpreter, where she admitted to changing "nipple" to "people" and explained
it away as, "Nipple sounds like people!"

~~~
srean
I have no problems believing that her handler may have been charitable, but
the question whether Koko had or did not have a language is far more difficult
to answer than the typical authoritative claims make it sound.

Does a 3 yr old human child have a language ? Do the Sentinelese [0] have a
language. Are we applying the same standards to animal language/intelligence
that we apply to humans ? Or is it that we rely heavily on the edge case that
we share a common language, and selectively extrapolate.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese)

~~~
foldr
>Does a 3 yr old human child have a language ?

Yes.

>Do the Sentinelese [0] have a language.

Yes. (Why do you think they don't?)

~~~
srean
> Why do you think they don't

I don't.

The points are (i) how do you prove that without invoking the 'humans have
language" as an axiom or "I can talk to a human' privilege and (ii) does one
use the same standards to prove or disprove that Koko had or did not have a
language.

You would need a scientific experiment capable of proving or disproving that
the subject possesses a language but the inference procedure does not use the
'human' privilege. If you do need the privilege the experiment is incapable of
proving a non-human has language even when they do.

~~~
upvotinglurker
This is the first time I've heard of the Sentinelese, but based on the
Wikipedia articles[0], they have been observed using enough words, grammar,
etc. for linguists to make hypotheses about how it is (or is not) related to
and inter-intelligible with the languages of nearby ethnic groups.

If "the Sentinelese have been observed using sounds and patterns of sounds in
ways that match what we have always known/referred to as language, therefore
they have language" is not an acceptable statement, then it's hard to see how
any statement on the subject can be made at all (including the statement "Koko
has language").

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language),
as well as the one you linked directly to

~~~
srean
Thanks for joining the thread even though everyone has probably left the
building.

In the very first paragraph of the Wikipedia page you linked, you will see
this --

" _Due to the lack of contact between the Sentinelese people and the rest of
the world for the past three centuries, nothing is known of their language_ "
\-- from your [0]

Everything about their language is a presumption/guess: "These people are
geographically close to these other tribes we know, therefore its very likely
they have a similar language." Nothing wrong with that line of reasoning,
except that it has very limited scope.

My purpose of introducing the Sentinelese to the discussion was precisely to
show that our judgement of whether someone or something has a language is
strongly biased. Case in point the Sentinelese. No one for a second will doubt
that they have a language but there is no direct verification, only
extrapolation.

" _It is presumed that the islanders speak a single language and that it is a
member of one of the Andamanese language families.[4] Based on what little is
known about similarities in culture and technology and their geographical
proximity, it is supposed that their language is related to the Ongan
languages, such as Jarawa, rather than to Great Andamanese.[6] On the two
documented occasions when Onge-speaking individuals were taken to North
Sentinel Island in order to attempt communication, they were unable to
recognise any of the language spoken by the inhabitants in the brief and
hostile exchanges that resulted._ " \-- from your [0]

Our mechanisms for language detection are too limited in scope to be applied
widely. Forget cross species inference even within humans it runs into
difficulties -- case in point Indus valley script.

Consider a non-native English speaker barely skilled in English. Her English
will very likely not adhere to English grammar and may not have the expected
recursive structure. Consider the language with which we interact with Google
search, most of the time they don't have recursive structure. It would be
presumptuous of an observer (say from another planet) to deem that the one
interacting with Google does not have language because there is no
rich/recursive linguistic structure.

------
motohagiography
To people doubting whether the ape "understood," the language, a useful test
is whether it used language as a) a tool to operate on its environment through
others, and b) to realize individually originated intent.

There is another criteria for basic intelligence whether the subject is
capable of reasoning about objects that are not physically present.

A dog scratching at a door to signal its desire that it wants you to open it,
is arguably using language.

Responding to commands is not necessarily using or understanding language as
it can just be explained as being acted upon.

I'm sure there is a philosophical catgory for this interpretation, of language
as tool, but it has a lot of ethical consequences.

------
andai
Surprised to see no mention of "put the kitten on my head", the most adorable
sequence of symbols that has ever come out of an intelligent animal.

[https://www.petcha.com/koko-the-gorilla-gets-new-kitten-
frie...](https://www.petcha.com/koko-the-gorilla-gets-new-kitten-friends-for-
her-birthday-signs-put-on-head-for-kitten-party-hat/)

------
freedomseeker
RIP Koko. Sad coincidence "World's oldest Sumatran orangutan, Puan, dies in
captivity at Perth Zoo at the age of 62"

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-19/oldest-orangutan-in-
th...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-19/oldest-orangutan-in-the-world-
dies-at-perth-zoo/9886946)

------
beenBoutIT
I find it very humanlike that after being gifted the tools of communication
Koko didn't decide to become a gorrilla literacy advocate. Instead, she chose
to spend her time hobnobbing with the likes of A-listers like TV's Mister
Roger's and Robin Williams.

------
stareatgoats
RIP Koko. I know many treat the claims of inter species communication like
this with great skepticism (for historical reasons I believe), but I
personally find the evidence overwhelming, and very inspiring, although not to
be exaggerated either.

This clip proves some of it I think:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNuZ4OE6vCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNuZ4OE6vCk)

------
jbschirtzinger
I was very sad to hear this. I still remember in Elementary school
encountering the book "Koko's kitten".

------
nashashmi
Was Koko able to talk to other gorillas or was it due to human captivity, she
could only talk to humans?

~~~
kevinmchugh
Very few (non-human) apes have ever learned any sign language, and Koko's
ability to sign was highly predicated on having a specific interpreter nearby.

------
jlebrech
let's make a subset of an human language for dolphins.

------
coolbreeze
My one year old does sign language.

~~~
Razengan
Reminds me of this Neil deGrasse Tyson bit:

[https://youtu.be/sLYorVnA44U](https://youtu.be/sLYorVnA44U)

