The Gorilla Who Could Speak
"Other animals are capable of telling us about themselves if we can find the right way to ask them." ((Francine Patterson, a renowned American researcher in comparative psychology).
Francine first met Koko, a gorilla born on July 4, 1971, at the San Francisco Zoo, when Koko was just one year old. About six months earlier, the young gorilla had fallen ill and was being cared for by volunteers. From that meeting began an extraordinary project: teaching a gorilla to communicate through sign language. By the year 2000, Koko had learned more than 2,000 signs and could understand over 2,000 spoken English words. According to various assessments, her IQ ranged between 70 and 90. She became the most famous gorilla in the world and a powerful symbol of her endangered species. Through this story, we meet a gorilla capable of expressing love, anger, sadness, and joy — a reminder that other living beings experience the world far more deeply than we often assume.
In her book “Koko’s Kitten,” Francine Patterson describes how Koko communicated: “She uses signs to name things in her environment, ask questions, tell how she feels, and title her drawings and paintings. Koko is able to communicate her opinions, and has a strong sense of who she is. In fact, when I asked Koko whether she was an animal or a person, she replied, “Fine person gorilla.”
When Koko passed away at the age of 46 in 2018, The New York Times wrote that she would be remembered by millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and a symbol of interspecies communication and empathy.
Koko understood what a birthday celebration was. When asked what she does on her birthday, she once replied: “Eat, drink, (get) older.” One day, Francine asked Koko what she would like as a birthday gift. Koko answered that she wanted a kitten. The psychologist was not surprised — she believed Koko’s wish was influenced by the children’s stories Francine used to read to her, such as "Puss in Boots", and "Three Little Kittens". Among three kittens — one dark gray, one soft gray with stripes, and one brown — Koko chose the gray striped one and signed that she wanted to name him All Ball(Koko’s own name for the kitten). Despite the kitten’s difficult temperament and occasional aggression, Koko repeatedly signed that she loved him.
Thanks to Koko, humanity learned not only that animals feel, but also that they think and form emotional bonds. One day, the kitten was struck by a car. When Koko realized that her friend was gone, she signed that she was crying. Later, when she was shown a drawing of a cat resembling her kitten, she signed again: “Cry, sad, frown.”
Koko died in 2018.
Her story reminds us that animals do not simply feel — they are capable of love, grief, and memory. And perhaps that is why their loss can hurt just as deeply as the loss of someone close to us.
Would you like to learn more about Koko’s life and extraordinary abilities?
