An excerpt from "Next of Kin" written by Roger Fouts with Stephen Tukel Mills A FAMILY AFFAIR BABY IN THE FAMILY By the time I met Washoe in September 1967 she had been living with the Gardners a little more than one year and had learned about two dozen signs. Washoe was now making steady and dramatic progress, unlike Gua and Viki who had faltered due to their foster parents' insistence on vocal speech. For the first time in a cross-fostering study, a baby chimpanzee's language was developing stage for stage like a human child's, right along with her abilities to use cups, forks, and the potty. Washoe indicated DRINK by making a fist with an outstretched thumb and touching the thumb to her mouth. For DOG she patted her thigh; for FLOWER she touched her nostrils with her fingertips; for LISTEN she touched her ear with an index finger; for OPEN she held her hands together, palms down, and then swung them open to face each other; for HURT she pointed her index finger towards each other and touched them at the site of her or someone else's injury; and so on. As the Gardners guessed right again that this infant primate would not need to be prodded to make these signs part of her life. You might think that a chimp I would have trouble understanding that TREE refers not just to one tree but to all trees. But very quickly Washoe was signing OPEN either to get out a door or into a cupboard, and signed DOG when she saw the real thing and when she came upon a picture of the real thing. After about ten months she began spontaneously combining words: GIMMIE SWEET and COME OPEN were soon followed by longer phrases like YOU ME HIDE and YOU ME GO OUT HURRY. She commented on her environment: LISTEN DOG; she asserted possession of her doll: BABY MINE; and she created her own vocabulary when she didn't know a sign: DIRTY GOOD, for her potty-chair. I also had to learn American Sign Language, of course, and the ASL dictionary quickly became my Bible. I took it everywhere and practiced my signs on anyone who would sit still long enough to watch-which usually meant my own son, Josh, who was not yet one year old. Every week I attended ASL classes at the Gardners' house, but most of my learning came from on the job with Washoe and her other student com- panions. We were not allowed to speak English, so it was like being immersed in the language of a foreign country. Washoe had her own ways of drilling me in my vocabulary. One day when I was giving her a piggyback ride around the backyard-one of her favorite games-she reached down from my shoulders and touched my chest to make the sign for YOU. Then she indicated which direction I should move in by forming the GO THERE sign with her outstretched arm and index finger. Once we got there, it was GO THERE to a differ- ent place. Then GO THERE again. And again. After zigzagging around the yard like this for awhile, I heard a snorting sound above my head. It was a distinctive sound Washoe made by contracting her nostrils whenever she signed FUNNY. I craned my neck up and sure enough she was placing her index finger on her nose in the FUNNY sign and snorting. For a second I couldn't figure out what was so funny. Then I felt something wet and warm flowing down my back and into my pants. I never forgot the sign for FUNNY after that. I quickly discovered that riotous pranks, at my expense, were practically a daily event with Washoe. When- ever I caught on to her shenanigans, Washoe would then raise the stakes, apparently to see how far she could push me. One morning after breakfast, about a month after we met, I was washing the dishes in the trailer while Washoe sat on the countertop next to me stirring the dishwater with her fingers. She began tasting the soapy water-a definite no-no-and she glanced up at me to get my reaction. I signed NOT DRINK THAT, and she stopped. Then she got a new idea. She dunked the dish towel in the water and looked at me carefully as she began sucking on the towel, as if to ask, "Does this constitute drinking or not?" Scanned by Ca er Not knowing the sign for SUCK I signed NOT DRINK DIRTY and took the towel away. I needed some more dish soap so I unlocked the cabinet under the sink where we kept the cleaning supplies. After squirting some soap on my sponge, I put the bottle back in the cupboard out of Washoe's reach. Meanwhile Washoe swiped the soapy dishrag, popped it in her mouth, and drew me into a game of keep- away in which I chased her around the trailer trying to retrieve the towel. She finally grew tired of this game, gave me back the rag, and went into her bedroom, where I found her playing with her dolls, kissing them and carefully arranging them around her in what we used to call "the magic circle." This gave me time to clean the table, pull up a chair, and record that morning's signs and interactions in the logbook. I was deep in thought as Washoe swung out of her room, propelling herself off the overhead doorjamb like it was an overhanging branch deep in the jungle. She hit the linoleum floor with enough speed to slide to the cleaning supply cupboard, which I had forgotten to lock. In a flash Washoe jerked open the door, grabbed the bottle, and rocketed back into her bedroom. I was on my feet and running. When I burst into her room she was squatting on her bed, inside the magic circle of dolls, chugalugging a bottle of Mr. Clean. I screamed in terror. Washoe was so startled that she stopped drinking. I grabbed her and rushed her into the kitchen, where I sat her on the table while I tried to gather my wits. I kept signing STAY in such an exaggerated way that Washoe was frozen with fear. My mind was racing: How do you get poison out? Get her to vomit. Washoe obviously knew something was very wrong because she cooperated like an angel. I cradled her head in my arm, opened her mouth, and shoved my finger down her throat. No luck. I tried again and again but this girl did not seem to have a gag reflex. What to do? Check the bottle for antidotes. I grabbed the bottle but I could hardly read the label. All I could think was: Washoe' going to die and it's all my fault. I killed the world's first signing chimp. Finally I focused on the label and read it...and reread it. Nothing about antidotes! Now I was panicking again. I remembered something about drinking milk if you're poisoned so I grabbed her bottle of formula out of the fridge, rapidly signed DRINK DRINK, and forced the bottle into her mouth. She sucked a little, then yanked the bottle out of her mouth and shot me a look that said she was tired of all this silliness. She jumped off the table and went back to her bedroom. By this point I could see that Washoe was not in her death throes. She was playing with her dolls as if nothing had happened. My panic began subsiding. Then it dawned on me that if the Mr. Clean label didn't say anything about antidotes it probably wasn't poison. I sat down and read the label again line by line. The next time I looked up I saw that I'd left the fridge open. Washoe was standing there removing all the containers of yogurt. She had just downed one and was opening another when she saw me looking at her. She piled the rest of the containers in both arms and swaggered on two feet back to her bedroom. What the heck, I thought. Hunger is a good sign. Besides, if she is poisoned, at least she'll have a nice last meal. I went back to reading the label-no skull and crossbones, no mention of poison. I was feeling hopeful. Maybe Mr. Clean wouldn't kill Washoe...or my career. An hour later Washoe was still alive and playing with her dolls. I was off the hook, except for one thing: Mr. Clean cleaned out Washoe like nobody's business. She had a remarkable case of diarrhea, which I spent the rest of the day cleaning up-happily. For several years I assumed that Washoe was typical of baby chimpanzees and that all juvenile chimps were rebels and rambunctious tricksters who chafed at any show of authority and tested every visible limit Though I had developed a real fondness for Washoe, my heart went out to chimpanzee mothers every- where. In my experience baby chimpanzees were a handful. That's why I was astonished and somewh relieved when I finally met more young chimpanzees in 1970 and discovered that no two were alike. Though all of the ones I met were raised in attentive human families, one was rather shy and solitary while another was even-tempered and always good-natured, and still a third was desperate for approval. I even knew one who wouldn't raid an unlocked refrigerator! I realized that a lot of what I'd taken to be characteristic chimpanzee behavior was simply Washoe's personality. Like all chimpanzees, like all animals for that matter, she was one of a kind. Scanned by CamScanner