Lucy the Human Chimpanzee

Thursday last week, we learned about Lucy, a chimpanzee that was raised by humans and became more and more human over the time she stayed at that house. 

Lucy was born in 1964 and was a test chimpanzee for the Institute of Primate Studies in Oklahoma. 

She was given to the Temerlin Family and raised by them as she was human. She was taught sign language and was able to sign about 140 signs. She invented words in sign language to describe things she didn't know by combining words she knew. Every time Lucy felt that her "parents" were sad, she went to them and laid her arms around them. Every time, Mr. Temerlin returned home, Lucy gave him a hug, and made tea. Lucy was also able to lie, one time she lied to Mrs. Temerlin about poop she had found. 

Lucy became famous for drinking gin, and masturbating to pictures of human males in a magazine with a vacuum cleaner. To test, if she was still attracted to chimpanzees, she met a male chimpanzee, but she was not able to relate to him at all. This was the time, that the Temerlins realized that Lucy was more a human than a chimpanzee. When Lucy turned 12, she became really strong and destroyed furniture in the house. The Temerlins decided that they would give Lucy away so she was brought to a chimpanzee rehabilitation center in Gambia, accompanied by Janis Carter, a graduate student. Janis was only supposed to stay a couple of weeks but months and years went by and Lucy was still not able to live with other chimpanzees. Janis finally left Lucy alone in the Center. One year after that, she returned to the Center with a couple of Lucy's belongings. When she arrived, she was greeted by Lucy; she took her things and left without looking back. Janis realized that Lucy became a chimpanzee again. One year later, when Janis returned, she found Lucy's skeleton lying on the island, her hands were missing and her head was separated from the rest of the skeleton. There was no sign of skin or hair. Lucy was 23 when she died, it was the year 1987. She lived most of her life like a human and the rest she tried to be a chimpanzee again.

This experiment shows that chimpanzees are closely related to humans and that they can become almost human- like when they live in a human environment. I think it is important that this experiment was made to find out more about the relationship between our species and chimpanzees.

Sources:

Lucy Wikipedia Article

RadioLab Episode