Jennie (18 page)

Aha! What about lying? What about all those bad human qualities that animals supposedly don't possess? Lying, cheating, stealing, cruelty, murder? The chimps had those too. Goodall observed coldblooded murder, viciousness, and cannibalism among her chimpanzees. And lying! Jennie could lie just as well as any human. We did a fascinating series of tests that showed this.

Dr. Prentiss placed a banana inside one of three locked boxes, while Jennie watched. Then, a “selfish” volunteer came into the room and asked Jennie:
Where banana?

The first time, Jennie pointed to the right box. Then the “selfish”
assistant unlocked the box and ate the banana, right in front of Jennie, without giving her any. Jennie was outraged! The perfidity of it!

The experiment was repeated.
This
time, when the “selfish” person asked Jennie where the banana was, she lied! She pointed to the wrong box, an empty box! Had she forgotten? We had the “selfish” assistant leave the key in the empty box and leave. And Jennie grabbed the key, opened up the real box, and ate the banana.

Think about it! It gives me shivers even now.

However, when we repeated the experiment with a “nice” assistant, a person who shared the banana with Jennie, she always told the truth. Weeks and even months later, she would still remember which volunteers were “selfish” and which would share fruit with her. She would lie to the former and tell the truth to the latter.

I'll tell you something else that wasn't in the reports. It was too subjective. It was just the kind of thing that would get the ethologists up in arms. When Jennie lied, she averted her eyes from the person she was lying to. It was uncanny. It was so damn human. She'd lie to you and her eyes would slide sideways in the most guilty way.

We extended this fascinating experiment one step further. Could Jennie tell when someone was lying to her? This time, we had the “selfish” assistant hide a banana in one of two boxes when Jennie couldn't see. Then we gave Jennie the key and let her in. The “selfish” assistant was there. And he lied, telling Jennie (using ASL) that the banana was in a particular box. Did Jennie believe him? Not on your life. She went straight to the other box and opened it up. But when the “nice” assistant told Jennie where the banana was, she believed it.

You know, I would watch Jennie in action, and my skin would crawl. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of connection between me and this animal. I could feel in my very blood the relationship between us.

If you can be a little patient, let me just tell you a few other
extraordinary experiments we did. Then I'll let you get back to the story.

We did this experiment with the colony chimps. We gave them colored disks, the red ones representing food and the blue ones representing toys. We taught them how to exchange the disks with assistants to receive one or the other. Pretty soon, when a chimp wanted something, he would go fetch a disk and give it to one of the staff. All right.

We took two chimps, and put one in one room and one in another, with a little hatch separating them. One chimp had been well fed, and he was put in a bare room with a pile of apples and a token representing
toy
. The other chimp was left hungry, and he was put in a room with a pile of toys and a token representing
food
. Do you follow?

What happened next was amazing. The full chimp saw the toys in the other room. So he handed his
toy
disk to the hungry chimp, and the hungry chimp gave him toys. Then the hungry chimp exchanged his
food
disk for the apples.

Think about that! That is much more than symbolic communication. The two chimps had spontaneously created a primitive
economy
.

Since the Jennie project ended, more recent experiments have shown even more startling results. Do you know the chimpanzee Washoe, who was taught ASL? Washoe recently adopted a baby and began spontaneously teaching that baby ASL. Without intervention from humans. So even transmission of learning can cross generational lines in chimpanzees.

Speaking of self-awareness, let me just end with one final experiment. This, for me, was the most startling experiment of all. We had a pile of photographs of animals, a photo of Jennie, and photos of people. We put the stack in front of Jennie and told her to separate the animals from the people. She started through them and carefully separated them.

She made only one mistake: she put herself in the human stack.

We told her she had made a mistake and asked her to do it again. Again, she put herself with the humans. So I said to her that she had made another mistake, and I took the photograph of her and put it in the animal stack.

I signed,
Jennie you are an animal
.

And do you know what happened? Jennie hooted and laughed and did a somersault. Great joke, huh?

We insisted that Jennie sort through the pictures again. This time she started to become annoyed, but she still placed herself in the human stack. Once again, I corrected her. I took her photograph out of the human stack and put it in with the animals.

This time Jennie wasn't so amused. She picked up the photographs and threw them across the room.

That wasn't all. Next, we added photographs of other chimpanzees to the stack. Jennie started sorting, again putting pictures of herself in the human stack and the animals in the other. Then she came to another chimpanzee. She stared and stared at it. Then she blithely threw it across the room and continued sorting. “Not classifiable” seemed to be her decision! Think about it! Whenever she came to a photo of a chimp she would just throw it across the room.

So you see, Jennie had a real identity problem, even then. For the life of me, I don't know why we didn't see it. No, we saw it, but we just didn't take it seriously. It seemed . . .
cute
that Jennie thought she was human.

My friend, man does not stand in glorious isolation, the crowning jewel of evolution. Man does not stand proudly on one side of a great divide with all the animal kingdom on the other. Hell no. The difference between us and apes exists only in degree. When you look at the sweep of evolution, the great magnificence and variety of life, from paramecium to dung beetle to man, the chimpanzee is a mere whisper away from us.
A mere whisper
. We must get over this idea that man is a special product of creation.

I will tell you a strange experience I had. I was eating in the
curators' dining room and this powerful feeling started to grow on me. A kind of
jamais vu
. I looked around at all the people talking and eating. And it suddenly seemed to me that all these people were apes: chattering, masticating, perambulating, gesticulating apes. Big grotesque hairless apes, with comical tufts of hair sticking out on top. Wearing these bizarre, ritualistically colored strips of cloth. We were a big gathering of apes, like apes in the forest gathering at a tree that had dropped its fruit. The sound, I tell you, it was like the sound in the ape house, this loud, meaningless chattering. And suddenly everything seemed so comical, so ridiculous and trivial . . . so bizarre and utterly without importance . . . that I found myself leaving the room in a panic.

Try it some time, in an airport or restaurant. Close your eyes and listen, and think of the ape house at the zoo. And then open them to watch the people ingesting their food, their lips moving, their joints rotating, their digits manipulating small objects, their appendages gesticulating, their faces contorting into various expressions, and then listen to the glottal eruptions that signify their laughter. . . .

[F
ROM
the journals of the Rev. Hendricks Palliser.]

R. was having tests this morning in the hospital. There has been much uncertainty and agony. My heart goes out to her. There is the possibility, although remote, of cancer. We must begin praying together again, as we used to at the beginning of our marriage. God have mercy on us both. She is afraid of death.

After we came home, I was sitting in the window of my study, looking out into the garden. I saw the sod move, and a gopher emerged into the sunlight and looked about. And then it withdrew
into its earthly dwelling. I went out and stamped on the ground and shouted, trying to drive it away. I feared for its safety. If R. sees traces of it she will set the lawn men on it. It is probably raising a little family there, underground.

I have not been diligent with my journal. Yesterday was Jennie's day, and I endured yet another trying afternoon. Jennie, who is so sweet and loving, can also be quite as selfish as the rest of us. All her thoughts revolve around herself,
her
requirements,
her
toys and
her
food. To be sure, children her age are considerably self-centered.

I purchased for her a coloring book of scenes from the Bible. I was trying to teach her of Our Savior's goodness and gentleness to little children. Jennie is much enamored of coloring, although her approach tends to the abstract. She scribbled in a most energetic manner without regard to the picture on the page. I gave her some blank paper and she decorated it with high enthusiasm. And if the truth be told, her efforts are quite as respectable as those of the so-called modern “artists” who splash some paint on canvas and sell it for thousands of dollars! I believe I will organize an art show of Jennie's
oeuvre
at the church. She possesses a creative “urge.” When Jennie has crayons in her hand, however, one has to watch her like a hawk, or she will mark the table and walls.

Jennie and I made a major accomplishment today. Now that my signing is improved, we have devised a kind of catechism, to teach her religious concepts. When Jennie gets a right answer I give her a cookie. She has launched into the game with the utmost enthusiasm. I have started writing down our conversations. It strikes me that, where else in the universe is an animal learning about God? I have decided to preserve this for posterity.

Our conversation today went like this:

Myself:
Jennie, what God?

Jennie:
Up
.

Myself:
Up where?

Jennie:
Up up
.

Myself:
Who God?

Jennie:
God God God
.

Myself:
Who God?

Jennie:
Up
.

Myself:
No, who God?

Jennie:
Love
.

Myself:
Correct!
(Then I gave her a cookie.)

Jennie:
God love God love God love
.

Myself:
Who Jesus?

Jennie:
Jesus Jesus
.

Myself:
No, Jennie, who Jesus?

Jennie:
Jennie cookie
.

Myself:
Who Jesus?

Jennie:
Tickle Jennie
.

Myself:
Who Jesus?

Jennie:
Jesus tickle Jennie
.

Myself:
Jesus God's son
.

Jennie:
Jesus
.

Myself:
Who son of God?

Jennie:
Jesus cookie tickle
.

Myself:
Who Jesus?

Jennie:
God's son God's son
.

When she signed
God's son
I was overwhelmed. The power of God is so overwhelming that I could feel His presence like a great light surrounding our little workroom. Is it possible that I have brought God to the mind of a chimpanzee? There it was,
God's son
. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God. It was her answer to the question Who is Jesus? What more could I ask for?

It was a transcendent moment.

I have now resolved to ask for a Christian commitment from Jennie. I will ask her to take Jesus into her heart as her savior. The question is, how may I guide Jennie to this next step? It may very well be impossible. But who would have thought we would progress so far? Who would have thought that Jeannie would comprehend that Jesus is the Son of God?

I have determined to accomplish this with a series of questions covering the steps to a Christian commitment: to acknowledge one's sinful nature, to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God who has the power to forgive our sins, and to take Jesus into our hearts and ask His forgiveness. So, I will proceed as follows:

Jennie you love Jesus? Jennie know Jennie bad? Jesus love Jennie? Jesus take away Jennie's bad?
I shall require her to repeat these things, or at the minimum to sign
Yes
. Understanding begins with repetition. Then there is the question of baptism. I can only imagine what the bishop might make of that. One bridge at a time. I am not one of those who slavishly hold to the necessity of baptism as a prerequisite to salvation. I shall study up on the signs.

R.'s chemotherapy is going better than expected. Total loss of hair, though. We are praying together for the first time since the early part of our marriage, and I am more filled with love for her than ever. She seems so broken and helpless; but God's love will give her and both of us strength.

[F
ROM
an interview with Lea Archibald.]

Let's see . . . Sometime in 1968 I got a call from the Ed Sullivan show. I don't know how they got our name, probably slipped to them by Dr. Prentiss. She was a careerist. Always trying to advance herself. Anyway, there was a lady on the telephone. I've forgotten her name.

She asked, oh so sweetly, if I was Mrs. Archibald. The lady with the darling chimpanzee?

Some darling! I said yes.

She wanted to know, Would Jennie and I like to be on television? She said this as if being on television was the apotheosis of a person's life.

I told her no thank you.

There was a shocked silence on the other end. Well! She said, this was the Ed
Sullivan
show.

But, I said, I'm not interested in being on the Ed
Sullivan
show.

Her tone changed. That hard-bitten New York voice finally showed itself. Honestly, television people are such horrors. She was prepared to offer a generous honorarium. She wanted to come up from New York to meet the “precious” chimpanzee.