Goodbye, Cousin Washoe

Image from Friends of Washoe web site

Washoe the chimp has died. I hope she's somewhere cool.

Scientists have announced the death of the first animal to break the language barrier, a female chimpanzee called Washoe who could communicate 250 words in human sign language.

Washoe was not only the first animal to learn a human language, she also passed on what she had learnt to her adopted son before dying on Tuesday at the ripe old age - for a chimp - of 42.

Her death was announced by scientists at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at Central Washington University, where she had lived in a research centre.

"Her name sign is formed with the fingers of a 'W' hand flicking the ear on the same side," read her biography on the Friends of Washoe website.

"Washoe is the first non-human animal to acquire a human language and her adopted son Loulis is the first to acquire a human language from another chimpanzee," it said.

Washoe, born in Africa in 1965, was the main subject of the 1997 book "Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me About Who We Are," written by the institute co-director Roger Fouts.

From a description of the language studies conducted with Washoe...

...Washoe was now also able to coin new words: the first time she saw a swan her trainer asked her 'What's that?' and she responded with 'water bird'. Washoe would often sign spontaneously, initiating sign language 'conversations' with her trainers. She also, quite spontaneously, developed 'swear words' - words which she added on to her other utterances to indicate displeasure. For example she would sign 'dirty' before someone's name if they had displeased her. The implications, then, is that she was using the words she had learned to fulfil communicative intentions: she was actually using language, rather than producing stimulus-response behaviour.

Washoe's Biography

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