Penny Patterson (2024)

FAQs

Did Koko ever ask a question? ›

Koko is said to have understood nouns, verbs, and adjectives, including abstract concepts like "good" and "fake", and was able to ask simple questions. However, it is generally accepted that she did not use syntax or grammar, and that her use of language did not exceed that of a young human child.

About the Show. In 1971, Penny Patterson, a graduate student at Stanford University, met Koko, a newborn gorilla in the San Francisco Zoo. Penny had grown up wanting to communicate with animals and decided to teach Koko sign language in hopes of finally crossing the boundary between animals and humans.

Gray—out of the box and requested, via sign language, that the kitten be placed atop her head. At the end of the day, two of the kittens (Ms. Gray and Ms. Black) stayed on as Koko's new pets.

She became an international celebrity during the course of her life, with a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs and the ability to understand 2,000 words of spoken English, according to The Gorilla Foundation.

She seemed to know that her own death was near, too. Koko seemed to say as much in her last conversation with Patterson. “She was looking a little sad and worried, and she looked straight at me and held two signs,” Patterson told ABC News. “One was 'patient' and the second one was 'old.

In February 1975 Koko's intelligence quotient was 84 on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Five months later, at the age of 4, her IQ rose to 95, only slightly below the average for a human child. By January 1976 the IQ was back to 85, which is not an uncommon fluctuation.

Born at the Cincinnati Zoo, Ndume was also brought to the sanctuary to be Koko's mating partner. Koko did get pregnant but had a miscarriage. The two remained close companions after that, according to Patterson. "I think that's one of Koko's deepest regrets is not having a baby," she told ABC News.

From age six months to one year Koko was critically ill and moved to a trailer on zoo property. Penny began working with Koko when she recovered her health, and requested permission from the zoo to continue working with her as part of her Ph. D. research in psychology at Stanford University.

Born in 1981 and already a father of three by the age of 10, the 400-pound Ndume was Koko's intended mate. Ndume has also provided the opportunity for us to discover methods of dealing with aberrant behaviors. This information will benefit all captive gorillas.

The trainer has read books about cats to Koko for years. Two of her favorite stories are ones that have cats as main characters. The books about cats caused her to feel emotion.

Was Koko sad when Robin died? ›

Koko the gorilla, the super-intelligent ape who understands spoken English and communicates with humans via sign language, apparently reacted to the death of his friend Robin Williams like the rest of us did -- with deep sadness.

All Ball died after being hit by a car. Cohn said she was devastated by the kitten's death. Koko was born at the San Francisco Zoo, and Dr.

Younger adults that are 8-12 years old are called blackbacks as they have black backs. (Duh!) After that, they're known as silverbacks because, funnily enough, they have silver backs. Unfortunately, there's no specific term for a female gorilla (or for a lot of female monkeys either).

Koko and her more recent potential mate, Ndume, mourned his death for several months.

Gorillas are not considered carnivores in the wild, despite the fact that they may consume meat when it is served to them in zoos. Although officially omnivores, gorillas primarily consume plants, including leaves, stems, bark, flowers, and fruits. They occasionally consume tiny vertebrates and insects as well.

Enculturated apes, who underwent extensive language training programs, successfully learned to answer quite complex questions and requests (including question words "who", "what", "when", "where", and "why"), although so far they failed to learn how to ask questions themselves.

Her most famous example of self-awareness came from a photograph she took of herself which was featured on the cover of National Geographic. In fact, Koko was the first gorilla to pass the mirror self-recognition test which researchers use as one indicator of self-awareness.

Over the years, Koko was able to understand and use more than 1,000 different signs — and famously asked for a cat for Christmas in 1983. Researchers initially gave her a stuffed animal, but Koko wouldn't play with it and continuously signed “sad.”