Elizabeth Hess' "Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp who would be Human"

I've followed the story of chimp language teaching since the early 1970s. I've been familiar with the experiments and the main personalities. But this book is a whole new dimension. It takes you behind the scenes to better understand the personalities and their motivations.

For me the most shocking aspect was the cruelty and indifference of most of the people involved with the chimps. Generally it wasn't intentional. A lot of it was the result of sheer ignorance about chimps and their needs. It was disturbing to see people "train" chimps in ASL who didn't know or use ASL themselves! It was horrifying to see the naive approach to handling animals that are many, many times stronger than us and unpredictable. The book is filled with stories of bites and injuries. But the worst aspect of the book was to find out the sad tale of neglect, abandonment, and a spiral downwards in the hands of labs that "research" the chimps to death. Very sad.

The book was a very good read. The author does a wonderful job of showing the emotions along with the actions, the gritty reality along with the high-minded rationalizations for the research program around Nim. It is gripping because you see poor Nim handed off again and again while his conditions got worse and the handlers more indifferent, even cruel. This book is a horror story for anybody who has empathy for animals.

On April 3, 1983, Nim was loaded onto a truck, alone, and driven to Texas. Almost ten years old, he was not yet fully grown and appeared deceptively approachable to anyone unfamiliar with the species. Nim must have been frightened at being moved to yet another strange place. There were no familiar faces, either human or simian, to greet him in Texas. Nevertheless, upon arrival, he looked people directly in the eye and scanned their faces, anticiapting some form of communication. There wasn't much. During those first few days, the ranch staff talked more about him than to him. Amory had described him as "the smartest animal in the world" but had not suggested that his employees learn any ASL to communicate with him. In fact, the staff at the ranch regarded signing, and all behavioral research, as a form of abuse and assumed that Nim would not want to sign if given the choice. No one, including Amory, understood that Nim routinely signed because it was the way he had learned to talk to people. In fact, he always looked for people who knew some ASL and was thrilled when he found them. When Nim gestured to the ranch hands at Black Beauty as they passed by his cage, hoping for a response that never came, it wasn't long before he became sullen and dejected.

I didn't learn anything about the research science. This book didn't cover that. It was focused on Nim Chimpsky and what his world was like with all the sordid details of betrayals and neglect. It is a "tell all" tale of naive enthusiasm and mistreatment. It gives you a real ringside seat into this one chimp's life. It is sad, but hopefully it reveals to you the seedier side of animal research.

I would recommend this book to anybody who loves animals and who want to meet a very unique chimp that learned to "speak" to humans. It is a heartwarming and heartbreaking story.