American Sign Language should be renamed as Universal Sign Language because it is a language spoken, not only by all peoples in the world, but also it is a language that can be spoken by Chimpanzees. Roger Fouts in 1967 first met Washoe the two year old chimpanzee that he would base his book Next of Kin on.
According to Roger Fouts, it was Washoe who had chosen him into the research program. The story goes that before being selected he had a meeting with Washoe’s human guardian, Allen Gardner. Just as the interview seemed to be going down hill for Roger, Allen Gardner asked if he’d like to meet Washoe to which for his luck he said yes. As they came near the playground where Washoe was playing, the child (at least that is what he first mistook her as) saw them coming “she leapt and began hooting” (Fouts, 15). She then sprinted to them and very unexpectedly jumped into his arms, hugging him with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist (15). He says that “years to come I would discover that she had an uncanny knack for seeking out and comforting those who were sad and hurt” (15).
In Roger’s point of view, “For the first time in a cross- fostering study, a baby chimpanzee’s language was developing stage for stage like a human child’s, right along with her abilities to use cups, forks, and the potty” (Fouts, 30). Washoe was first capable of signing the basics for eating, drinking, animals, or other objects. But what I found remarkable is that she would sign HURT not only when she herself was hurt, but also when she saw “someone else’s injury” (30). Further along in development Roger says that she began to combine words to express her wants and needs and when she didn’t know a sign she would make up her own. For example, “DIRTY GOOD” was her sign for “potty-chair” (30).
The kind of games Washoe likes to play is “hide- and- go seek” and “Simon Says”. For hide- and- go seek she would sign “YOU WANT PLAY PEEKABOO? Or ME PEEKABOO HURRY” (Fouts, 35). And for Simon Says, Roger would sign “DO THIS” to which she would mimic the sign “DO THIS” and then he would make gestures and she again would mimic him (35). What I would like to hear is the way in which a Chimpanzee baby laughs, because as Roger Fouts explains, Washoe loved to be tickled, to which she would begin “snorting uproariously and begging for MORE MORE”(35). But like all humans, she too liked her alone time, her way of doing this is by climbing up on “top of the weeping willow” (35). There she would sit “munching on an occasional leaf, watching the world go” (35). Among her other hobbies, Washoe also enjoyed reading picture books on animals and drawing.
Washoe’s lunch usually consisted of “baby food or yogurt or [her] favorite, Vienna sausage” (35). Roger points out that “when you’re feeding a chimpanzee in a high chair it is easy to forget that you’re not serving a human baby” (35). I can identify with his statement because I’ve often compared my baby to an animal that has no concept of what of what the proper way of eating at the dinner table is. Food that is unwanted gets thrown across the room; even food that is wanted doesn’t always end up in my daughter’s mouth. Sometimes she’ll taste her food take it out of her mouth and try to put it in mine or a dinner guest’s mouth.
Just like no two human babies are the same “no two [chimpanzees] were alike” (Fouts, 33). Fouts should know because he spent years researching Washoe and in 1970 he met more young chimpanzees living with “attentive human families” and realized that his first assumption that all “baby chimpanzees and that all juvenile chimps were rebels and rambunctious tricksters” was incorrect (33). He goes on to describe the different personalities of chimpanzees, how “one was rather shy and solitary while another was even- tempered and always good- natured, and still another was desperate for approval” ( 33).
I hope that these stories from Roger Fouts' book Next of Kin, interests you enough to check it out. I’ve just begun reading it, and so far I find it witty, intriguing, and not to mention heart warming.
