Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human

This book is scarcely about Nim Chimpsky at all, its far more about all the humans in his life. Its about the person who bought him, the many people who raised him as a human child - although they would never have given up on the job as they all did so quickly with Nim - and all the people who were part of the various experiments on him. Finally it is about the people who looked after him in his retirement.

As a book about an animal, animal behaviour and language acquisition, this book fails miserably - Vince Smith, Roger Fouts and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh have all written much more interestingly on these subjects. However, it was interesting to see the wheeling and dealing and politicking of the world that lives on research grants and where jealousy rather than co-operation is the name of the game for these scientists.

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The terribly sad story of Nim the chimp who was raised with human children and taught sign language, and then after a brief period in a chimp sanctuary, more or less abandoned to his fate. I devoured this immediately after watching Project Nim (2011), an extremely good documentary. I recommend both. ( )

In Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, author Elizabeth Hess chronicles the awkward but innovative experiment in which a chimpanzee was raised as a human in order to test the long held ideal that language is a uniquely human trait. Named in parody of linguist Noam Chomsky, Nim Chimpsky is the center of "Project Nim" and thus the book surrounding his life.

Delving into the details of the primate facility in Oklahoma where he was born to the home of his foster family and the research university in New York, Hess unravels a story that fluctuates between humorous, sweet, appalling, and unbelievable. I found myself exceptionally interested in the scientific side of this story but was shocked at the lack of ethics and standards in raising of Nim. Though expected to learn ASL, the family he lived with was not fluent in sign language and few of his numerous handlers were intent on keeping records of his progress. Also, when the project began very little thought was given to the long term ramification of teaching a chimpanzee to behave as a human and predictably, the adolescent Nim quickly becomes too much to handle. The tragedy of the personable chimp left without a home or a purpose - and the greater story of research animals in general - is ultimately the most stunning part of Hess's work.

It's impossible to approach this book without falling a little bit in love with the precocious Nim. The photographic documentation of the tiny baby chimp who dresses in toddler clothes; growing into a midsized animal with enough sense to wash dishes and play with pets; and finally a full grown ape with a deep intelligence in his all-too-human eyes reveal the closeness of chimpanzees to homo sapiens in a way that statistics about genetic similarity will never match. Though it may not conclusively answer the questions of animals' ability to use language what Nim's story does is raise even more questions about our compassion towards other species. This is a book for lovers of animals and fans of science and anyone who enjoys an out of the ordinary biography. ( )

This book is the biography of chimp, and an examination of the circumstances surrounding his life and death. The animal in question was called "Nim Chimpsky" and he was raised in a human home and taught sign language from birth as part of an experiment to try and refute linguist Noam Chomsky's teachings that animals can't really learn language. (NB: This isn't "learn language" as a layman like me might mean it. The question at issue here isn't whether or not animals can learn words. There's no question that a chimp can learn to sign "banana give me eat." Chomsky's argument is more involved than that. To express it very crudely, his assertion is that animals can't employ syntax ). The book is much less about the question of linguistics, though, and much more focused on the life of the chimp. Here was an extraordinarily smart creature. He was brought up like a child -- taught to hang his jacket on a hook, to help to wash the dishes, and to watch TV and munch snacks with the family. Then, at the end of the experiment, he's back to being just another expendable animal, locked in a tiny cage uselessly begging his captors in sign language to be let out.

It's a frustrating history to read, full of sloppy experiments, of people who are caring but who have no idea how to deal with a chimp, and of people experienced in dealing with chimps but who regard them as no more deserving of sympathy than a lab rat. The real tragedy, as Hess paints it is of well-meaning people who mostly just have no idea how hard it will be to care for him: people who assume that he'll be as easy as a dog, or maybe as easy as a human child, and simple questions of money, since for most of Nim's life, the funds to keep him were in short supply.

Further, it can be, at times, horrifying, as this humanized creature is treated in ways that make you cringe.

Hess' book is very informal, is opinionated and I don't know how rigorously it was researched. So, I won't treat it as a gospel truth. But, having never read in detail about these Ape Language Acquisition experiments before, I found it very interesting ( )

This may be the single most depressing book I've ever read. Nim was taken from his mama to be raised by humans, and they all abandoned him in various ways. At one point Nim was even in a research lab - the kind of place where chimps are infected with diseases for drug studies. There are amusing stories here and there in the book, and it is interesting to read about Nim learning and using American Sign Language. Still, I wish I hadn't read this book. It left me feeling very sad.