Jennie (21 page)

Let me give you an example. In Jennie's universe, Hugo was the dominant male, the “alpha” male. Nobody had higher status. Thus, if Hugo were arguing with someone (like me), Jennie would threaten that other person.

I remember well some of the scenes that Jennie caused. Once, Hugo and I were down in the basement room at the museum. We were sitting on the floor, playing with Jennie and talking about the design of some experiment. We had a disagreement—I can't even remember what about. We never raised our voices or anything obvious like that. We were merely disagreeing. While making some
point, I touched Hugo on the arm, and quick as a flash, Jennie displayed and rushed over and bit me, and then signed
Angry, bite, angry
.

Hugo, of course, scolded Jennie. Jennie cowered and seemed very surprised. She held up a limp hand—you know, the pronated wrist gesture that indicates submission among chimpanzees—and signed
Sorry sorry
.

Hugo asked Jennie why she bit me, and Jennie answered
Man hurt
.

Hugo asked,
Man hurt who?

You Hugo Hugo
.

Harold no hurt Hugo. Harold friend
.

Sorry sorry sorry. Harold friend Harold friend
.

[Dr. Epstein demonstrated the conversation in ASL.]

The conversation went something like that. She had misunderstood our human interaction. She saw it in chimpanzee terms.

When Jennie got to be three or four, she watched Hugo's interactions with other people like a hawk. If you were talking to Hugo, and touched him or patted him on the back, Jennie might take that as a threat and bristle up and bark. She made a
Wraaa!
barking sound to indicate a threat. Once I nearly got bitten when I clapped Hugo on the back a little too vigorously, congratulating him for something. I had to speak very sharply to Jennie. That was another thing: if you showed fear or backed down, she would bite you. If you stood your ground and spoke or signed angrily to her, she usually chickened out. That's another chimpanzee behavior mode. They're just as cowardly as humans. But let us think for a moment what cowardice is in evolutionary terms. On the other hand, let's not. Back to the story!

Not everything about Jennie was cute and wonderful. She was a complex, intelligent, thinking being. She had a distinct and utterly unique personality. Like all of us, she had her unattractive qualities.

Talk about greed! Jennie got possessive as she got older. There were things lying around that she considered hers. God forbid if you should touch them or pick them up. Once, I went into Hugo's
office and we were going to look over something at his desk. I started pushing that ratty old wing chair over to his desk. You know, the one Jennie used to sit in. And what happened? There was Jennie in the corner, displaying and bristling and barking at me. I was monkeying with her chair! [Laughs.] Sorry, no pun intended. Hugo then told me Jennie had to be locked in her room when the cleaning lady came, because she hated the lady moving around the furniture.

Did Lea tell you about Jennie beating up the carpet? That's a funny story. Lea had the living room recarpeted when Jennie was away at the museum one day. When Jennie came back, she ambled into the living room and suddenly all her hair was standing on end. She barked and backed out, grimacing in fear. And then she rushed back in and attacked the carpet. I mean literally
attacked
it. She stomped on it and beat it and pounded it and tried to tear it up, screaming her head off. She was furious.

The point I'm making is that I don't think there was anything unnatural in Jennie becoming more aggressive as she got older. All chimpanzees, whether in captivity or in the wild, become more assertive as they grow up. For heaven's sake, human children are exactly the same.

I suppose what I really mean to say is that chimps and humans share a great deal, including selfishness, cruelty, cowardice, greed, and a propensity to violence. Well, now, I don't mean to make it sound all bad. Chimps also show such human attributes as love of family, kindness, altruism, friendship, and courage. The very worst and the very best.
Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis!

[E
XCERPT
from “Jennie Comes of Age,” in
Psychology Today
magazine, March 16, 1970. Used with permission.]

In a long-running experiment at the Boston Museum of Natural History, a chimpanzee is being taught to communicate using American
Sign Language. Jennie is being raised by Dr. Hugo Archibald, a curator in the Anthropology Department. Dr. Archibald found Jennie as a baby in the jungles of Africa. He brought her to America and he and Mrs. Archibald have been raising her as their own daughter. They live in a suburb of Boston. . . .

The experiment is not the first attempt to teach chimpanzees American Sign Language. According to many primatologists, it shares something in common with these earlier experiments: it is fatally flawed.

“This is a waste of NSF [National Science Foundation] money,” says Dr. Craig Miller of the University of Pennsylvania, a leading critic of language training of chimpanzees. Dr. Miller assembled a team of psychologists to study a two-hour videotape of Jennie signing to her trainer, Pamela Prentiss of the Tufts University Center for Primate Research. The tape was intensively studied using freeze-frame techniques. “One of our psychologists spent twenty hours analyzing six minutes of tape,” says Dr. Miller. “This was the most intensive study of chimpanzee ‘signing' ever attempted.”

The conclusion? Says Dr. Miller: “The chimpanzee is not using language. Period.” The cognitive scientists studying the tape found that most “utterances” of Jennie's were preceded by use of the same signs by the trainer. Thus, Dr. Miller argues, the chimpanzee was merely repeating signs. A second problem is syntax. Neither Jennie nor any of the ASL-trained chimpanzees has mastered syntax. “Syntax is fundamental to the definition of language,” says Dr. Miller. “ ‘Dog bites man' has a totally different meaning from ‘man bites dog.' ” Without mastery of syntax, Jennie cannot be said to have “language” according to the usual definitionoftheterm.

Dr. Miller also brings up the question of motivation. Every sign that Jennie made was aimed at the immediate gratification of some desire, usually food, a hug, or possession of a toy. “I defy these ASL
researchers to get a chimpanzee to say anything that isn't motivated by the prospect of an immediate reward,” he challenges. Another researcher who studied the tape termed Jennie's signing “running on with the hands until she gets what she wants.”

The Miller team's analysis of the tape showed that Jennie interrupted a great deal and had not grasped the two-way nature of conversation. She rarely initiated conversations. Finally, her longer utterances did not add appreciably to the meaning and merely consisted of a multiplication of the same words.

“The basic problem,” Dr. Miller contends, “is that these so-called researchers want so very badly to believe that apes have the potential for language. There is far too strong an emotional identification between researcher and subject for any kind of objective analysis. It would be like asking a mother to evaluate the intelligence of her son. What is needed here is a little rigor and emotional distance. As a start I would use a video monitor instead of a human being to teach. This would eliminate any possibility of cuing. And I would introduce rigorous double-blind controls. Finally, I would cut down on the background ‘static'—the confusion and lack of structure—by keeping the animal in a restricted, controlled environment. A big noisy household with kids and neighbors coming and going is not exactly an ideal research environment.”

[F
ROM
an interview with Dr. Pamela Prentiss.]

Every time we tested Jennie, we discovered something new. Every single experiment opened up more avenues for research. It was such a heady time. The chimpanzee mind is so complex. The only thing was, we could never seem to limit the variables and create a “pure” experimental environment. We were always testing five things at once.

Our psychologist, Sonnenblick, was interested in “intentional theory.” You must know all about that from
Generative Grammar and Deep Structure
. You
did
read that book, didn't you? I know, it's a little big. But how are you supposed to write about this stuff if you're too goddamn lazy to . . . Excuse me, but this is
important
. At least read this. “Intentional Analysis, Prevarication, Abstractionalization, and Generalization in the Mind of an Ape.” It's a short paper. You'll find everything in there.

The question Sonnenblick wanted to know was: Do chimpanzees know that we have intentions? Let me explain. Let's say I accidentally hurt you. You will be less upset than if I deliberately hurt you. Right? Because you know my intentions. Now this is not like dogs. When you step on a dog's tail, he'll bite you whether you meant it or not. He doesn't know your intentions. And he can't know your intentions; he hasn't got the brains. Up until then, we thought only human beings could interpret the intentions of another. So the question was: Can chimps know we have intentions? If so, can they figure out those intentions?

We did this experiment to see if chimps could lie. Oh, Dr. Epstein told you about that? Good. Now listen. The experiment didn't only show that chimps could lie. Jennie knew which person would share the banana and which person wouldn't. That is, Jennie knew the intention of the person. Okay?

Sonnenblick wanted to explore this idea further. This is complicated, so pay attention. Can chimps attribute intentions to a third party? He designed a very ingenious test. The test didn't ask Jennie to solve a problem for herself. It asked her how a third person would solve a problem.

Here's what we did. We created a series of videotapes. Jennie had watched so much TV at the Archibald house that it was second nature for her to view a monitor. That was at least one good thing from all that television she watched. Mrs. Archibald would just park her in front of the TV. It was such a bother to her, having
Jennie around. It was television that ruined her son, Sandy, too. Let me tell you—

I'm off the subject. These videotapes showed people confronting a problem. Then we'd ask Jennie to solve the problem for them. For example, one tape showed a man trying to reach a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling. Shown nearby was a chair. When the tape was over we showed Jennie photographs illustrating two possible solutions to the problem. In one, the man was lying on the floor with the chair on its side. He had fallen off the chair, you see. The second showed the man stepping up on the chair, which was now under the bananas. She was given the photographs and told to place the “right” one in a certain place and ring a bell when she was done. Then we would leave the room. This was to prevent any unconscious cuing on our part.

She chose the correct solution. Naturally. So we showed her three more complex problems: a man shivering in a room with an unplugged heater, a man trying to get out of a locked cage, and a man trying to water a garden with an unattached hose. These were all things Jennie was familiar with, you see, in her home environment.

Then we gave Jennie photographs of the solutions. The first pair showed the heater either plugged in or unplugged. The second showed two keys, one bent, the other whole. The third pair showed an attached hose and an unattached hose.

Jennie got them all right. Just like that! It's all here in the paper. I think in—well, let me see that paper. In twenty-four tries she got twenty correct solutions. Now look at this. She scored twice as high as three-and-a-half-year-olds given the same set of problems!

Now we come to the most interesting example of all. Pay attention. Sonnenblick realized that there were several ways to interpret the results. Was Jennie choosing solutions because they were what she would do in the situation? Or what she would
like
to see the person do? Or what the person
should
do?

Sonnenblick had a brilliant solution to this problem. You aren't
going to believe this. He used a “mean” assistant. Did Epstein tell you about this? He had an assistant dress up like a robber with a bandanna around his face and dark glasses. And the person did mean things to Jennie. Nothing physical, of course. Just mean. Like eat a banana without giving her any. Or ignore her when she signed
Hug
.

We got it so Jennie really hated this fellow. When she saw him coming, she'd scream and threaten. And he made these growling noises and slunk around. Very amusing.

Okay. So we took the “mean” person and showed Jennie a videotape of him trying to reach the bananas. Then we showed Jennie two pictures of chairs: one good, the other one broken with only three legs. She chose the chair with three legs! Can you believe it!

Then we showed Jennie a videotape of the “mean” man trying to get out of a locked cage. We showed her the two keys. And she chose the bent key! She often made these choices with glee, laughing and spinning 'round and 'round. It was
incredible
.

Do you see what was happening here? For people she liked, she chose the good solutions. For people she didn't like, she always chose the unpleasant solutions, the catastrophes. So she was indicating what she wanted to see happen.

Think about it. She was able to realize that the “mean” person
intended
to get the bananas and she was damned if he would! She was
thwarting
his intentions. Now if this isn't proof that chimps can ascribe intentions to others, I don't know what is.

We did all kinds of experiments. Let's see. You should read some of these papers here, where everything is explained. We wanted to know if a chimpanzee could count. No problem! As long as the number was small. We would put out five buttons, and then offer several trays with either five pebbles or four or six. We'd ask Jennie for the correct solution, and she'd select the five. Five was about as high as she could count reliably. When we went higher her scores dropped. By seven it was just about randomness. Although
as we tested her she started to get better. If we'd worked on her I bet we could've taught her to add and subtract. No kidding.