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Comment by Rendello | Hacker News Reader

I was fascinated by Koko's abilities and took them at face value until I saw her famous climate change speech:

> I am gorilla. I am flowers, animals. I am nature. Man Koko love. Earth Koko love. But Man stupid. Stupid! Koko sorry. Koko cry. Time hurry! Fix Earth! Help Earth! Hurry! Protect Earth. Nature see you. Thank you.

I saw that and felt like I was in crazy land. That's supposedly the kind of talking Koko's been doing this whole time?? Turns out, there was a lot of government funding into ape communication in the 70s, and when researchers figured out that apes can't meaningfully communicate, the funding dried up. Her handler, Penny Patterson, pivoted from research to PR. And how.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/what-does-koko-know-about-...

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The other thing that stood out for me was - if that was so successful - why do we not have other Kokos? Did we just get lucky and find the one genius who could do this or did we maybe trick ourselves?

There's a lot of evidence to suggest most of her research was fraudulent

I wonder how much of it was just a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans situation

And at least in Hans' case, the general public could instantly verify the result, as opposed to having it interpreted by a biased handler.

Almost all of it was exactly this.

That's why it's never been done again. Because it was never done in the first place.

From the Snopes:

> Some viewers took the video a little too literally, however, and were surprised at Koko's pithy and timely exhortation to heed the perils of global warming. But nothing about the video indicates that Koko can actually entertain, much less communicate to humans, thoughts about environmentalism.

Personally I never took it literally. I saw the video and knew right away it was just a marketing stunt, but that didn't mean I suddenly thought research into ape intelligence and language should stop. I do wish they had made it more clear that it was just a stunt because I'm sure people like you felt mislead.

I am still fascinated with Koko and the brains of great apes! Also fascinating that they've never asked a question but at least one grey parrot has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)#cite_note-jordan...

There's some interesting reading here (the section and the page generally):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language#Criticism_a...

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Regarding:

> I do wish they had made it more clear that it was just a stunt because I'm sure people like you felt mislead.

People like me felt like "what the hell was that?", maybe :D

The more you look into Penny Patterson's claims, the more you go "what the hell?"

misled

thanks I probably misspell that one a lot

You're not alone ... the whole world has forgotten how to spell "led" ever since spell checkers came into existence. It's a pet peeve and a common error, making its way even into the most prestigious publications.

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