Woodside, CA Koko — the gorilla known for her extraordinary mastery of sign language, and as the primary ambassador for her endangered species — passed away yesterday morning in her sleep at the age of 46.
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.
Koko, a western lowland gorilla, was born Hanabi-ko (Japanese for “Fireworks Child”) on July 4, 1971 at the San Francisco Zoo.
Koko’s capacity for language and empathy has opened the minds and hearts of millions. She has been featured in multiple documentaries and appeared on the cover of National Geographic twice. The first cover, in October of 1978, featured a photograph Koko had taken of herself in a mirror. The second issue, in January of 1985, included the story of Koko and her kitten, All Ball.
Following the article, the book Koko’s Kitten was published and continues to be used in elementary schools worldwide. Her impact has been profound and what she has taught us about the emotional capacity of gorillas and their cognitive abilities will continue to shape the world.
46 yrs old…a little longer than the life span of the afro-american gorilla
David King
R.I.P.
Juan Hill
diet low in saturated fats and no high fructose.
Michael Thomas
Why didn’t they inseminate her? Retards
Justin Taylor
F She was smarter than most niggers
Aiden Cox
You try inseminationg a half ton Gorllia who's smarter than the pavement apes and spics you have working for you
Brayden Hall
This is really really sad. My wife and I absolutely love Koko. The videos of her with the kitten we're so beautiful, and when they had to tell her the kitten died, it was literally heartbreaking.
Poor girl
Jayden Edwards
She actually seemed really into Robin Williams when he met her. She was pawing all over him. Maybe she was digging on his 'stach and was wanting a ride on it. Would have been the perfect time for Robin to help on the first steps of a Gorilla/human hybrid.
Sleep well Koko, you're with your human husbano Robin now
Researchers in Japan have pitted human adults against five-year-old chimpanzees in a test of mental agility and memory - and the chimps won.
In a test of short-term memory involving numbers flashed on a computer screen, the apes comfortably beat their human opponents.
She has also campaigned tirelessly for her last, so far failed, mission: to get Koko a baby. Patterson hoped Koko would mate with her former companion Michael, but apparently Koko told her that Michael was like a brother and mating would be “embarrassing”.
when Koko, the gorilla famous for knowing sign language, was asked where gorillas go after death, she responded by signing "Comfortable hole, bye."
Youtube video: Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday
Alexander Wilson
rip harambe you were too pure for this world
Connor Rodriguez
That's a dick move tbh Even for The Onion
Noah Gutierrez
First harambe, now koko. I want off Mr. Bone's Wild Ride.
I tried. After 20 years, I found I had being doing her in the pooper. Imagining that just made me feel disgusted.
Matthew Bailey
Fucking kill yourself facebooker. Go and play golf and suck your boss's anus.
Alexander Campbell
Oh no, how will we get jhonny to breed now?
Samuel Torres
who tf cares?
Austin Morales
I've been spending my entire adult life inside one comfortable hole after another
Caleb Morales
….this is the part where you decide which anime you'll watch for the 107th time before masturbating yourself to sleep in that empty little bedroom of yours again….
and I'm not joking, either. I'm being completely serious. Of course, they're all really uptight, and they all PRETEND like they're heterosexual… of course… but eventually I have found out that ''every single one of them' you was actually a closet homosexual.
Evan Butler
…and I'm NOT a Democrat, so so before you open your stupid mouth and accuse me of being a Democrat, let me remind you that I'm not a Democrat, or a 'Libertarian', or an 'independant party' idiot, or a Republican…
I don't believe in any of that bullshit
Jacob Foster
Those shaming tactics are quite obsolete. What you propose is better than spending time with a feminist.
Joshua Russell
Of course, I've always found all Democrats to be NIGGER-LEVEL
if they're not niggers, then they're on the same level
Caleb Myers
'shaming' my ass…….
Is it 'shaming' to make the observation that every circus clown I've seen where's facial makeup and a big red nose?
Is it 'shaming' to notice that every Olympic swimmer I've seen spends a lot of time in swimming pools?
you're grasping for straws
Leo Johnson
RIP in pepperoni smartest African.
Jacob Wright
Why don't you faggots just filter "…"? Absolutely nobody but this obnoxious cuck posts that way around here.
Ayden Barnes
It's not 'shaming' to notice all garbagemen smell like a trash can, or all Asians smell like rotting cabbage
Evan Richardson
…………..as if I give a flying fuck whether or not you or any other irrelevant faceless 'droplet of mist in the background fog of irrelevant anonymity' reads my posts or not……….
…. Are you so stupid that you don't realize I don't even acknowledge your existence?
….. I overlooked you even quicker than any female you've ever met in your life, and they Overlook you without a second thought….
To say that you are irrelevant would be an understatement.
Elijah Morgan
…. Apparently, you've been very successful in filtering 'vagina' out of your existence, because the choices you make are predictable and trendy, and you spend your life sitting all by yourself in front of your computer, posting an image boards, watching anime, and most importantly playing video games… Which is exactly why you are socially and sexually stunted… A midget in these areas… Other men your age are out there emptying their testicles into hot girls left and right, grabbing the bull by the horn and getting as much out of life as they can while they are young… But you sit there in front of your lonely little computer day after day after day, telling yourself that you are Elite
You are a predictable little parrot
Samuel Morris
He's responded to me twice and I can't see it. Not only is he an obnoxious cuck, he's retarded enough to type out walls of text for people who have him filtered.
Gabriel White
lies. not even him but you read every word
John Watson
exactly. otherwise, he wouldn't know about a "wall of text"
Jason Nelson
you're a terrible liar. he bitchslapped the fuck outta you
Jack Gonzalez
This is my new favorite thread. Can we run this up to 300 posts too? probably
Jayden Harris
we are all curious how you knew he responded to you twice
Ian Brooks
I don't see why not
Christian Stewart
I hate his guts, but I've got to admit, he basically dragged his nutsack all up and down your fucking face
she brought inner happiness and warmth to so many lives
and she had no idea……….
Nolan Ramirez
the koko thread it is
this is the new shellfish
Carter Bell
Koko the Gorilla Wasn't Human, But She Taught Us So Much About Ourselves
Koko the gorilla earned her pronouns a long, long time ago. It is one of humanity’s great vanities that we withhold pronouns from most animals — or at least we withhold the good ones. Homo sapiens get the dignity of a “he” or a “she.” We fob off other species with an “it.” We speak of the woman who walked down the street, and the dog that accompanied her.
It was never that way with Koko, the celebrated western lowland gorilla who died peacefully in her sleep on June 19, at age 46 — a bit longer than the 30 to 40 years her species typically lives in the wild. From the time she was born, on July 4, 1971, the people who knew Koko and cared for her made sure she was a she. And when the rest of us spoke about her in the years that followed, the very nature of the things we said demanded that we show her the same linguistic respect. It was the rare person who would think of describing Koko as “the gorilla that understands 2,000 words and can sign 1,000 of them.” Those accomplishments fairly demand a who''
Koko first came to most people’s attention forty years ago, when she appeared on the cover of National Geographic, taking her own picture in a mirror, and we fell for her talents and her cross-species charm straightaway. When she was a year old, Koko began working with Francine “Penny” Patterson, then a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology at Stanford University, who had long believed that there was more to animals—and perhaps a bit less to humans—than we had always believed. Over the millennia, scientists and philosophers who could not deny that animals appeared to have emotions, thoughts and inner lives could still draw a bright line between them and us thanks to language. It took a great, complex, even divinely blessed mind to encode actions and objects into sounds and words that were then turned into a working language. Show me an animal that can talk and I’ll admit that maybe we’re just one more species in a world full of them. Until then, beasts are merely beasts.
Patterson’s wager — the correct one — was that part of what made us so special was simply that evolution spotted us the hardware of speech: vocal cords, a palate, a tongue and lips that could produce such an infinitely varied array of sounds. If animals had something like that, they could express themselves, too. And while they may not give us Beowulf, they could at least make their thoughts and feelings known. So Patterson worked with what Koko did have — her dextrous, expressive hands — taught her American Sign Language, and with that opened the door to an extraordinary mind.
It wasn’t just that Koko knew her nouns — toy and apple and dog and cookie. She did know hundreds of them, but for all animals nouns are the low-hanging fruit — solid objects that can be associated with labels. More impressive were the verbs; more impressive still was the language of mood and emotion and spatial relations — more and sad and in and stupid and please and hurry and out. And there was also mine — a primitive idea for both animals and humans, signaling, as it so often does, greed or aggression or indifference to others, and yet an idea nonetheless that no animal before had ever been known to grasp abstractly.
Most remarkably — and most poignantly — were the thoughts and sentences Koko built. “You key there me cookie,” she signed to Patterson, instructing her to unlock a cabinet and bring a treat. It was impressive enough for the clarity of its meaning, but there is also the use of the imperative “you,” silent and implied in human sentences, expressed in Koko’s. And there is the “there,” the designation of a point in three-dimensional space.
In 1984, when Koko’s kitten, whom she named “All Ball” was hit by a car and died, she mourned openly. “Cat, cry, have-sorry, Koko-love, unattention, visit me,” she signed. She expressed her grief in more or less the same way we would—and she apparently experienced it in exactly the same way, too.
rest in peace koko… i taught raccoons how to talk like parrots. they were babies that had lost there mother so i took them in and raised them. they only sign they would use there paws for was to wave hello.
Daniel Kelly
After Koko breached the language berm that we thought separated us from all other species, more animals have come across. There is Kanzi, the 37-year-old bonobo who can understand hundreds of lexigrams representing words and actions, and can construct sentences by pointing out the correct symbol on a screen. There is Chaser, the 14-year-old border collie, who knows the name of 1,022 objects and can retrieve them on command. There was Alex, the 31-year-old gray parrot, who died in 2007 with a vocabulary of 150 words and the same ability as Koko and Kanzi to assemble them into thoughts and sentences.
It was Alex, whose lexicon was smaller than that of the other expressive animals, who may have thrilled — and spooked — us the most. He not only knew his words, he could speak his words. A parrot who mimics without understanding is an amusement. A parrot who knows what he’s saying as he says it is an intelligent agent with a working mind.
that, of course, is true to a degree of all animals — or at least all higher animals. If we can no longer plausibly claim that language elevates us uniquely among the beasts, we can at least say it lifts every animal who can learn it well over every animal who can learn it less well, and over all animals who cannot learn it at all. That may not make the lives of the language-savvy animals more worthy, but it does make them richer. By that measure, Koko, in her long 46 years, lived richly and well indeed.
Colton Cooper
F Was really interested in Koko as a kid, even as a adult. What a shame.
I'm also a bit of an amateur animal behavior specialist. I trained my ex-wife to not say anything at all, or else I'd punch her in the face.
it took a couple weeks, but it was awesome.
Nolan Davis
I've dealt with a LOT of deaths in my life. lots of them… Tragic ones…
I think I'm a bit of a sociopath or something, because I've always found that I get MUCH more devestated when one of my animals dies than when a family member or friend dies.
I've tried analyzing it dozens of times, and I really don't know why
My relationships with animals have always been much, much more rewarding and true than any relationships with humans.
The bonds have grown so deep with my 'four legged' family members, and although it's trite and cliche to call it 'unconditional love', that's exactly what it is. They've never judged me or been disappointed in me, nor have I in them
I've become hardened towards humans and their suffering.
I'm actually an animal rights enthusiast (that's an understatement) and knowing what I know about human's cruelty towards animals, I've grown decidedly sadistic towards humans.
In fact, I've long since reached a point where I receive immense pleasure from watching humans suffer
lied to me pretended to be my friend gave me shitty advice set me up sold me fake goods tried to fuck my wife behind my back or betrayed me in any way, shape or form
….only the two legged animals do those things to you….
A woman is NOT interested in dating a child. If she wants a child, she will find a MAN to give her a child of her own.
If a woman meets a man, even a really attractive man, and she discovers that he sits on his ass playing video games like a 9 year old boy, she will instantly scratch him off her list…..
Michael Roberts
But there's GOOD NEWS!!!
there's still hope for you
women love men who love animals
Henry Cooper
A G A I N :
WOMEN LOVE MEN WHO LOVE ANIMALS
Juan Garcia
you are a cucc for caring. women are boring, especially the morons that don't know animals are pointless. you would attract the dumb yellowheads.
Joshua Nguyen
okay man that's total bullshit and let me tell you why. because we all know you can't teach a woman anything.
Landon Jackson
And now she has the house, the car, and half your salary.
Dylan Campbell
HOW I DETERMINE IF I WANT TO FUCK A CHICK:
on 'first dates', I will usually ask a girl if she'd like to go around town with me, taking a big bag of dry cat food to several shopping center parking lots, feeding the dozens of stray animals that always live in the woods around the parking lots….
(trust me, EVERY Shopping Center parking lot has colonies of stray cats and dogs that live in the perimeter, generation after generation, having been abandoned buy cruel people who dropped them out of their cars and let them fend for themselves)
these animals remain hidden, but they're there alright. They're always starving, and desperate for food. At first you won't see any of them, but if you look carefully and shake a bag of cat food, you will see one of them appear out of the bushes, and then you will see two more, and then five more, and eventually you will find around 50 of them….
If the girl says "no", I thank them for saving me time, and I know I would NEVER fuck that worthless bitch in a million years
Andrew Evans
if you saw the Swedish girl I married, I'm quite sure your jaw would hit the floor…….
she was actually FROM SWEDEN
and she had a body that literally looked like she had been airbrushed in a Playboy magazine
She looked like a 'swedish ski team's athlete… Her body was quite literally STUNNING….
S T U N N I N G . . . .
she fucking LOVED animals….. she was a great woman….
just a kid when I married her, basically… 18 years old…..
and boy oh boy oh boy was she dynamite in bed
she almost killed me several times with that hole. it was like some kind of gymnastic shit.
yeah…. don't throw your youth away on video games…… you can always go back to being a dork later on in life, but THIS is your pivotal moment…..
Samuel Long
Quality women care about CARING MEN who care about protecting innocent animals
trust me
Kayden Hughes
Weirdly, this is true. No one can love an animal-hater. It is simple nature. Sorry, boy, know your menagerie of dead cats under the floorboards of your mommy's basement, but you've gotta get a grip! No one cares about you! We're still coming for your animal cruelty. Be prepared
