Some people who call themselves scientists hold fast to the idea that monkeys are just people who don’t know how to talk.
It’s a deliberate exaggeration to say that a monkey knows sign language. They have learned that certain signs get them certain foods. They are good at finding ways to get food.
Some individuals desperately want to believe that monkeys are little humans and that humans discriminate against them. Sorry, but monkeys are not human.
I believe that certain primates have the intellectual capacity of a 2 or 3 year old human and as much, or less, real understanding.
For someone who knows nothing about the intensive work trainers did with Koko, you certainly are opinionated. And wrong.
Except this story is about an ape.
Not a monkey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
The Hominidae (/hɒˈmɪnɪdiː/), whose members are known as great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo, the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan; Gorilla, the eastern and western gorilla; Pan, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo; and Homo, which includes modern humans and its extinct relatives (e.g., the Neanderthal), and ancestors, such as Homo erectus.