A granddaughter was in town for Thanksgiving and I was asked to tell the story of Koko.
I wrote a blog about Koko in 2005 and I repeat it here.
The reason for the earlier blog was that Iris Rivera, Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller had sued Koko. Koko was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace for asking to see Iris, Nancy and Kendra's nipples. Iris went along with it. The other two didn’t. All three were fired at some later date.
Koko is a female gorilla who knows more than 1000 words of American sign language and responds to 2000 words of spoken English. Iris, Nancy and Kendra are some form of female homo sapien Puritan whose knowledge of English or reasonable human behavior is unknown.
I know Koko and her human trainer, Penny Patterson, from the mid-1970s. Penny came to me for help. Penny is so good looking she didn't need to ask ... I was willing no matter what she needed.
Penny had borrowed two apes from the San Francisco Zoo and taught them how to use American sign language and to interact with images on a computer screen. After more than a year, the apes knew enough language to tell Penny that they didn't want to be returned to the Zoo. Imagine not wanting to go back to a cage in a zoo?
Penny wanted my help in getting the S.F. Zoo to free the apes for research, indefinitely. She was willing to pay and I was willing to raise the money.
I knew the Park and Recreation Commission, which spoke for the Zoo, would not listen to the pleadings of two disgruntled great apes. So I mounted a campaign with hundreds of young school kids, two hundred of whom showed up, in a packed hearing room, to testify at the Park and Rec Commission on behalf of the ‘monkeys’. We won. Penny and the apes were grateful.
I occasionally took friends down to meet Koko. Koko was most affectionate with a bull dike friend of mine. Koko was most affectionate with females. How she knew my friend was a female is beyond me.
One of the things about Penny that I liked was that she named one of the monkeys in her lab (not an ape) Noam. Noam Chimpsky. She chose the name for the simple reason that the great Marxist Noam Chomsky was famous for the linguistic position that humans (specifically humans) are hard wired for speech. Also hard wired for class hatred and greed.
The lawsuits (split into two separate suits) against Koko were settled soon after they were brought and the settlement amounts were not published.
The absurdity of such lawsuits was never addressed, but the tongue in cheek coverage by every national media suggests that sexual harassment by apes is not taken too seriously in America.