Experts Have Dissected Koko The Gorilla’s Eerie Message Made To Humanity In Her Last Years

Koko was smart, too, and so she may have known what she was doing. As a young gorilla, she was meticulously trained in a particular form of sign language. It’s said that, in the end, she had a grasp of about 2,000 terms — a very impressive vocabulary. And her skills meant she was often able to express the things she was feeling — good or bad.

Koko’s ability to communicate endeared her to folks all around the world. So, when she died aged 46 in the summer of 2018, the news was greeted by a wave of sadness. Global media outlets reported on her passing, and tributes flooded in. The story of the gorilla who’d learned to sign really seemed to resonate with lots of people — including a few famous faces you may know.

Yep, over the decades, Koko graced the covers of popular magazines and rubbed shoulders with A-list celebrities. When she signed her thoughts, people listened. And when she had a message for all of us on the planet, it was hard not to be affected by her words.

Three years before she died, Koko starred in a video that really struck a chord with lots of people. Maybe that’s because it contained a message that seemed to be directly aimed at every single one of us. The gorilla was expressing her thoughts on a big subject, and it stopped a lot of folks in their tracks.

But then Koko had been blowing minds right from her earliest days. She arrived into the world on July 4, 1971, born at the San Francisco Zoo. At first, she was called Hanabi-ko — a term that means “fireworks child” in Japanese. And by the time the young gorilla was a year old, she was receiving lessons in sign language from Dr. Francine Patterson.

After years of lessons, Koko apparently came to understand over 1,000 terms in sign language. And she used these communication skills to express herself — including things she wanted. For instance, in the winter of 1983, she requested a cat for her Christmas present. Her carers then gave her a doll, but she wasn’t happy with that.

Koko was disappointed with the toy, but she soon got her own way. When her birthday came around, her carers brought her a bunch of real kittens. She was allowed to choose one to look after, so she picked a white-and-gray cat. She called it All Ball and took great care of it. And according to one of Koko’s human friends, their relationship was adorable.

Ron Cohn was part of the team overseeing Koko, and in 1985 he told the Los Angeles Times, “[All Ball and Koko] would play chase with each other, and [Koko] would hold... and pet [All Ball]... The cat reacted to her as she would a human, but she was pretty independent and would bite Koko or wriggle loose when she got tired of being babied.”

Yet while Koko took care of All Ball, she wasn’t above blaming the cat for her own misbehavior. One day, the super-smart gorilla tore a sink away from its place on the wall. And instead of owning up to her misdemeanor, she pointed towards All Ball and signed the words “Cat did it.” It was just one of Koko’s hilarious moments. When she spoke to the world, though, she was deadly serious.

And, sadly, Koko’s time with her feline friend didn’t last for very long. Only half a year into their companionship, All Ball was run over and killed. The gorilla was apparently distraught when she learned the news, as Cohn remembered. “She started whimpering — a distinct hooting sound that gorillas make when they are sad. We all started crying together,” he said.

The loss of All Ball evidently hit Koko hard, but she wasn’t the last cat to be taken under the gorilla’s care. She looked after several more through the years. The gorilla’s love of felines was even the subject of a 1990 book called Koko’s Kittens. And that certainly wasn’t her only brush with fame.

Yup, Koko was already a celebrity by the time that book was published. She’d been a cover star for National Geographic way back in 1978 and was once again on the front of the magazine in 1985. This brought her to the attention of the masses.

And as Koko was now a star in her own right, she naturally began hanging out with fellow famous folk. The gorilla was supposedly a big fan of Mister Rogers and would regularly tune in to watch him on television. One day, she even got to meet the man himself.

Another one of Koko’s celeb pals was the late Robin Williams, to whom she was introduced in 2001. During that meeting, the gorilla and the comedian seemed to have a lot of fun. They were seen tickling each other. At one stage, Koko even grabbed Williams’ glasses and wore them herself.

When Williams passed away in 2016, Koko had to be informed of the news. Photos later surfaced online of the gorilla looking very sad, seemingly snapped after she learned of her friend’s death. Many people were touched by her apparent ability to understand and express as complex an emotion as grief. Maybe she did know the seriousness of what she was saying when she gave that message to the world.

On the lighter side, it’s reported that Koko had a habit of referring to herself as “queen.” She would gesture with her paw, dragging it over her chest in a diagonal direction. This was mimicking a royal sash, which in her version of sign language meant “queen.”

According to Koko’s trainer, the gorilla hadn’t actually been exposed to the sign for “queen” very often. Speaking to The Atlantic in 2015, Dr. Patterson reflected, “It was a sign we almost never used! Koko understands that she’s special because of all the attention she’s had from professors and caregivers and the media.”

Throughout her 46 years, Koko really did capture many people’s hearts. And when she died in 2018, there was an outpouring of grief. A statement from The Gorilla Foundation summed it all up, saying, “Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy. She was beloved and will be deeply missed.”

Throughout her life, Koko got people to think about nature and humankind’s relationship to the planet. And perhaps the most poignant example of this came in 2015, when the gorilla starred in a video recorded for the Paris Climate Summit, or COP 21. It was then that the great ape gave a message that stunned viewers into silence.

Koko can be seen communicating in sign language throughout the course of the video. And she appears to be addressing the whole of humanity about the dire crises facing our species and our world. The gist of her message? Well, let's just spell it out for you...

Translated from her version of sign language, Koko’s message was as follows: “I am gorilla… I am flowers, animals. I am nature. Man Koko love. Earth Koko love. But man stupid… Stupid!” And while Koko’s choice of words communicated a lot, she wasn't done yet. The last part of her message left many with a sick feeling.

The majestic animal continued, "Koko sorry. Koko cry. Time hurry! Fix Earth! Help Earth! Hurry! Protect Earth… Nature see you. Thank you." It's safe to say there weren't many dry eyes in the room after she was finished. And soon, The Gorilla Foundation put out an eyebrow-raising statement of their own, attempting to clarify Koko's remarks.

The group stressed that Koko really was speaking about humans damaging Earth. “Koko was clear about the main message: man is harming the Earth and its many animal and plant species and needs to ‘hurry’ and fix the problem,” the foundation said. But not everyone was convinced that the message was entirely Koko’s. In fact, some had quite the sinister explanation for the monkey's "statement."

Some people may have been left utterly shocked by the clip. And seeing another animal echo concerns about how humans are treating the planet definitely comes as a sobering experience. But the thing is, maybe this clip isn’t quite as clear-cut as it first appears. A few folks have even been vocally suspicious of Koko’s message, pointing to some rather "interesting" details.

For one thing, we can’t see who’s out of shot of the camera. Maybe a trainer is coaxing the gorilla to sign in a certain way? The video is also clearly edited heavily, so we can’t say for certain that Koko even delivered a coherent message in one go. Finally, The Gorilla Foundation had to come clean about how they "stretched" the truth.

In its press release, the organization said that the clip had been pieced together from several different takes. And, of course, with careful editing, it’s easy enough to create “messages” that were never really intended in the first place.

But for argument’s sake, let’s say the edit didn’t fundamentally change Koko’s speech and that she wasn’t being guided by someone off-camera. Even then, we still can’t prove the gorilla was actually expressing concern for mankind’s impact on Earth. Her signs could be interpreted in many different ways, including one cynical take that some have suggested...

What would be the motive for faking Koko’s message? Well, some folks have argued that experts could be playing up the ability of gorillas to express complex emotions. Stories like that bring a lot of attention, which in turn leads to more funding for research. But even so, a number of people studying primates aren’t entirely convinced that they can communicate on the level claimed by Koko’s team.

One such skeptic is biological anthropologist Barbara King, whose expertise lies in the behavior and emotions of primates. Given her background, she’s someone to listen to when it comes to whether or not Koko can really process things in the ways The Gorilla Foundation has long claimed. And for what it’s worth, she’s not convinced.

Humans can sometimes project our own behaviors and quirks onto other species. But when we do this, we can misinterpret the actual ways in which these animals function. A gorilla doesn’t have the same mind as us, and it’s unlikely to grasp a subject as complex as how humans impact the world.

Even Koko’s signing abilities have been called into question. When she died, the media ran stories trumpeting her supposed proficiency in sign language. But as Dr. Adam Schembri from the University of Birmingham pointed out to the BBC, this can be a little misleading. Koko’s signing was an altered form of American Sign Language (ASL), so it’s not true to simply say she had “mastered sign language,” as some news outlets claimed.

Another expert in sign language is Gerardo Ortega, who took to social media to give his two cents. Posting on Twitter, Ortega wrote, “At most, [Koko] ritualized the use of some signs about the here and now and used them only after... [her] trainer promoted her.” In other words, her capacity for language just wasn’t as sophisticated as it may have first appeared.

Professor Graham Turner from Heriot-Watt University also piled in on the debate. He told BBC News, “Serious efforts to teach apes some signing began in the 1960s with researchers attempting to teach individual signs derived from ASL. And the apes did learn to use some hand gestures in this way. But it is a distortion to imply that Koko or any ape has ever learned to use a natural signed language like a human being.”

Why is that? Professor Turner went on, “These languages use the face, body, and hands in an integrated way, exploiting their multidimensional, spatial medium through the layering of simultaneous and extremely precise visual elements. So communication in ASL or any such signed language entails acquiring command of a far more complex system of linguistic expression.”

In layman’s terms, apes just don’t have minds capable of engaging in language systems as complex as the ones used by humans. At least, there’s no definitive evidence to prove they can do so. As intelligent as she may have been, then, perhaps Koko never really had the grasp of language she seemed to command.

According to Professor Turner, even apes trained in sign language don’t seem able to form entire sentences. They can appear capable of it from time to time, but the academic argues that such instances only tend to occur when trainers encourage them. Then people interpret these prompted signs as full-blown sequences of thought from the ape.

So, maybe Koko never really understood what she was saying in her video for COP 21. But even if that’s true, is it such a bad thing? The point of the clip was still pretty noble, so what’s the issue? Well, some people think it cheapens the serious message at its heart.

On the other hand, a lot of people will have seen Koko’s video. And maybe it resonated enough to make them think hard about how people are affecting the planet. In the end, it comes down to personal preference. Some people will think the video was a worthwhile exercise. Others will disagree, seeing it as a publicity stunt trivializing an important issue.

But no matter what, Koko really was loved by lots of people all over the world. And even if her sign language skills weren’t quite all they were trumpeted to be, she was still a remarkable animal. She undoubtedly did make lots of people think about humanity’s relationship with our fellow living creatures.

Some folks even form a true bond with great apes. Damian Aspinall had raised Kwibi the gorilla like he would his own son. Then, after releasing the animal back into the wild, he wanted to visit him once again. It had been five years, though, and Kwibi had become known as an aggressive beast. Would the powerful aggressor remember his human caregiver? And how would he react to his human “dad”?

Aspinall is an English multi-millionaire and conservationist who runs the Aspinall Foundation. Originally set up by his father, the charity aims to breed rare and endangered animals.

First established as a Serengeti-style zoo on the family’s estate, the foundation had the animals roam the grounds and house as if they were family members. And when Aspinall took over after his father had passed away, he vowed to set them free.

Aspinall manages Howletts Wild Animal Park and Port Lympne Reserve in Kent, England. More than 100 gorillas are thought to have been born in the Aspinall Foundation parks, with over 50 released into the wild in Africa. Among them was Kwibi.

Having grown up with the animals, Aspinall always treated gorillas like part of the family. Kwibi, however, stood out from the others. Aspinall had raised him as though he were his own son.

Aspinall reared Kwibi in Howletts Park until the great ape was five years old. At that time, as part of the rehabilitation program to return animals to their natural habitats, Aspinall released Kwibi into the jungles of Africa.

In fact, part of the Aspinall Foundation includes an area in the Gabon forest of Africa. So it was here, among the million acres of protected habitat, that Kwibi found a new home.

Gorillas released into the forest are closely monitored, with staff supplying food and medication to the vulnerable animals until they show signs that they can survive on their own. As a matter of routine, Aspinall also visits the habitat several times a year to check how the gorillas are doing.

On one trip, concerned staff alerted Aspinall that they hadn’t seen Kwibi, now aged ten, for a long time. And, despite warnings that Kwibi had shown aggression toward humans, Aspinall went in search of him.

Aspinall set off by river, calling for his old friend. And the search continued for hours until, suddenly, Kwibi emerged from the trees. The animal was five years older and five years stronger than during Aspinall’s last encounter with him...

With trepidation, Aspinall clambered up the river bank to see his animal kin. There was a risk that Kwibi wouldn’t recognize him and get violent, so Aspinall’s team made a plan to distract the ape with food if he turned.

Aspinall slowly approached the ape, and as he did so, Kwibi produced a sound that no one was expecting. He made a gentle purring sound that Aspinall calls his “love gurgle.” Kwibi recognized him – and seemed very pleased to see him!

“The moment I heard the gurgle I knew I’d be okay,” Aspinall told Today. “Right at that moment, everything stopped, and I was just captivated in that moment. He looked in my eyes with such intensity and such love.”

The pair lay in the grass, caressing and gurgling as they fed leaves to each other. It was a heartwarming moment, but the danger wasn’t over. Kwibi’s wives were close by eyeing the encounter, and there was no certainty that they would follow Kwibi’s gentle lead.

But Aspinall was in luck. One by one, Kwibi proudly introduced his wives to his human friend. It was a proper family reunion. What’s more, when Aspinall finally had to leave the party, something even more amazing happened. “He wouldn’t let me leave, Aspinall told CBS. “He clung onto me very tightly. He wanted me to stay.”

Aspinall’s unconventional relationship with animals came from a troubled childhood. His parents divorced when he was six, and his father raised him from an emotional distance.

As an infant, Aspinall once found himself in the hands of a female gorilla who proudly showed him off to her own family. Aspinall had found a love from the apes that was absent from his parents.

Aspinall has since lovingly brought up his own three daughters. Furthermore, he shares with them his passion for returning species in the Aspinall Foundation’s care back to the wild.

“If I could extinguish all zoos over the next 30 years, including my own, I would. I wouldn’t hesitate.” Aspinall told CBS. “We don’t have the right as a species to take animals. That disgusts me.”

Through his work with the Aspinall Foundation, the gorilla lover hopes to inspire others into conservation. As he told Today, “I think we have a responsibility to this Earth, and I think we as a species can do so much more for this planet.”