“Dedicated researchers brought apes like Koko into their homes or turned their labs into home-like environments where people and apes could play together and try, often awkwardly, to understand each other.”
THAT worked out well!
Yeah I always think about those horrible chimp attacks whenever I see something about people treating them as “children” or even pets.
Grown chimps are extremely dangerous, what most people think gorillas are. From what I read, ironically gorillas aren’t that dangerous.
Koko was not a chimp. Chimps actually do wage war against other chimps, even killing them.
Gorillas like Koko don’t- they may have territorial displays but they don’t have the vindictive aggression of chimpanzees. Apes do seem to have better grasp of language, are able to assemble signed words together in sensible ways rather than just repeating the same learned motions.