HUMANISING A CHIMPANZEE

Evening Star, Issue 21881, 19 November 1934, Page 11

HUMANISING A CHIMPANZEE

An extraordinary experiment waa dee scribed in the educational science section of the-. British Association meeting by Dr N. T. Walker, of Aberdeen University. . Professor and Mrs Kellogg, of Indian* University, adopted a female chimpanzee and reared her in exactly the same ■way as, they reared their own: son, in an en. deavour to study the influence of human environment on the development and re< actions of. a chimpanzee. The chimpanzee was a baby seven and a-half months old when adopted. She had been born in captivity, and the experimooters’ own child, a - boy of two and * half months older* acted , as control subject. Conditions were so arranged that th* child ape should he reared in the same, way to the most minute detail. , The animal wa» to be fed by bottle, Clothed, bathed, fondled, and even placed in a, perambu. liter arid wheeled about.

She was to be induced at the proper time' to Walk upright and learn to eat with * spoon. Her mistakes were to bo gently but persistently corrected, and she was to be made a thoroughly humanised member of the family. The training lasted nin* months. The result of the, experiment wax that the chimpanzee remained a chimpanzee and the child a .child..

At the end of nine months, however,.,lh* ape was able to , respond to fifty-eight different words and the child to sixty-eight,-In certain forms of learning she wasi’supcr. ior to Donald, the boy. She • learnt move quickly to eat with a spoon, and actually snowed a preference for walking upright. But in imitative learning, added Dr Walker, the ape was inferior.