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What 'Nim Chimpsky' taught them all
Nim Chimpsky was raised by humans, but couldn't help being a chimp.
By Marjorie Kehefrom the March 11, 2008 edition
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It was the early 1970s, an era of experimentation. Minds were open and grants were plentiful at the moment that scientists latched onto the idea of raising baby chimpanzees as humans and teaching them sign language. After all, if they succeeded they might penetrate the mysteries of the animal mind. And if not, what was the harm?
Plenty, as journalist Elizabeth Hess demonstrates in Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, her nonfiction account of the most famous of several chimps raised by human families for scientific purposes.
Nim did learn to use 150 characters of American Sign Language (ASL) and to the end of his days he was apt to contritely sign "sorry" if he bit or hurt someone. (And in his last years he became a tutor, teaching basic signs to fellow chimps and cagemates.)
But if scientists hoped to deepen interspecies understanding, then most of what they learned from Nim was how much they didn't know. As a result, they grossly underestimated the difficulties of working with a chimp and, tragically, entirely failed to grasp the depth of his emotional needs.
"Nim Chimpsky" is about as poignant an animal story as you can get. The neglect Nim suffered (most of which was inadvertent) is heartbreaking. And yet in many ways reading about him remains a joyous experience. Nim was an unforgettable character – affectionate, mischievous, empathetic, and utterly charming. People who knew him could never stop loving him.
"I thought about him every day," says his human "sister" 30 years after parting from him. "I still do." Nim was born in 1973 in a research facility in Norman, Okla. Ten days later he was taken from his mother and given to the LaFarges, a wealthy family living in a brownstone in New York City. There, Nim was a happy fellow, frolicking with the LaFarge children in his tiny overalls, developing a taste for ice cream and pizza, and bonding deeply with his people.
His "mother," Stephanie, recalled years later that if she cried in his presence he would bring her a tissue. She remembered his eyes as "large and wide" with "a gravitas and depth that were haunting."
But Nim had work to do. His sponsor was a Columbia University professor to whose lab he commuted daily. There, he was expected to sit at a desk and memorize ASL signs. (Nim's name was a defiant sneer at linguist Noam Chomsky, who believed the use of language was unique to humans. The whole point of Project Nim was to prove Chomsky wrong.)
But Nim was not always successful or cooperative. When the LaFarges decided they couldn't keep him any longer, it was just the first in a series of abandonments for Nim. Unfortunately, while busy bonding Nim to humans, no one had stopped to think of how hard it might be to someday undo those attachments.
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