A Trip Down Memory Lane

Bow is about to turn thirteen this month. This is an important birthday. In prehistoric, Biblical and aboriginal cultures, when a boy turned thirteen, it meant he was ready to be a man. It's kind of true for chimpanzees, too.

One sign of Bow's maturity is his frequent displays. But another sign of maturity is that he can decide that he's displayed enough, and it is time to move on. When Bow is done with that, nothing that Leo contrives in order to re-ignite him is going to work. Bow has self-control.

After active exercise, many lazy hours are spent enjoying a nap in the sun. Bow is secure in the knowledge that his needs are provided for and that he is a valued member of the family.

Lately I have been reminiscing about how all this began.

Bow was a month old when he came to join our family. He was completely helpless at the time. In a few months, he learned to walk.

Early development in chimpanzees is much faster than in humans, and Bow has always been a natural gymnast.

Bow traveled with us to New Hampshire to attend a linguistics conference, and he has always been very affectionate, adventuresome, but careful not to fall into water.

When Bow moved into the pens, that is when he became most literate, and yet he never ceased to be part of the family. 

Because we depend in part on the sales of books, I encourage anyone who has a small child in the family and another child on the way to buy the story of how my daughter first met Bow. A new baby in the family -- human or not -- can be a big adjustment. 

http://www.amazon.com/When-Sword-Met-Bow-Katz/dp/1456373765

But did you know that you can help in other ways? If you follow the link to Amazon, you can vote down the negative "review" posted there by an animal rights activist. Commitment to a chimpanzee -- or to any other creature or person in your life -- means not abandoning them as they grow and develop and change through different stages. Not everyone is capable of that kind of commitment. Sometimes people who cannot commit try to make trouble for people who can.

Was that person's negative experience inevitable? What would be the most compassionate way to respond to those remarks? Sometimes I think I should write a book about potty training. How many people have failed to get through that one stage of development with their chimpanzee or their human child? How much unhappiness is still just a result of not being able to get over that one little hurdle? Would that poor reviewer have had a completely different experience with their own chimpanzee if only they had had a little guidance in that one area of life?

As it is, Bow is well trained, but he also has constant companionship. This means I have to be in the pens twelve hours a day to supervise, and he is never alone, because when I am not there, he has Lawrence. 

Sometimes people ask me how I can stand to be so cooped up. In fact, it was much harder at first, in 2007, when Bow first was confined,  than it is now, eight years later. I have grown used to our living arrangement, as has Bow, and we have found ways to accommodate each other's needs to not always be engaged in the same activity while spending our time together. Life in the pens is good. 

Don't Be a Stranger

People sometimes ask me what it takes to maintain a good relationship with Bow. I think the old adage "don't be a stranger" is the key. People say this to each other, and what they mean is: "Don't forget to drop by. Don't stay away so long that by the time you come back again we won't recognize you, or will feel funny around you."

Human society right now is very confused about this issue. We tell our children not to talk to strangers, and yet we expect them to interact with strangers every day. People send their children to preschools where the caretakers are expected to be interchangeable. They go to schools where if the teacher is sick, on leave or in state mandated programs for self-improvement, another person that the children have never seen before in their lives can step in at a moment's notice and expect to get the same level of obedience and trust as the previous teacher. So we tell them not to talk to strangers, but require them to talk to strangers all the time. It's just one of many, many double messages that we send.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to an event at my daughter's school. I sat on the bleachers among a sea of strangers, and we watched one of those rituals that help to weave communities together: a basketball tournament. A hoop queen crowning. Families and children packed like sardines together, and nobody minding that strangers were touching them on all sides.

Nobody made a display to say "I am stronger than you are, so watch out," because that display was ritualized in the form of basketball. And nobody went around saying "I am the alpha female," because that competition was also ritualized.

Meanwhile, in order to leave early to attend this event, I had to have Lawrence come on Thursday to sit with Bow, even though he had just been here on Wednesday. And guess what? Even though on Wednesday, just like every other Wednesday, Bow made a powerful display of his might that lasted a full five minutes before Lawrence was allowed to go in, when Lawrence came on Thursday Bow just shrugged, as if to say: "Yeah, go ahead. Come in."

There was no challenge. There was no rattling of the doors, and Bow's hair did not stand on end. Lawrence could go in, because he hadn't been a stranger. If you came over yesterday, you can come today, too. No problem. Stay away for a whole week, and you are a stranger and have to earn your stripes.

I came home wearing my "cool mom" outfit, and Bow was not impressed. I'm no stranger, so it really doesn't matter what I wear. I'm okay.

That is the secret. There's nothing more to it than that. But  in a society where time is money, few people can afford not to be strangers, even to their own children.

He doesn't like me so much

Bow's been misbehaving, off and on, all day today. Maybe it's the weather. It's suddenly so hot outside. Sword got out of school at 12:30. This is her last day. Waiting for her school bus to bring her home, I picked some ripe cherries off our tree. Seeing that the bus was late, I brought the cherries back and showed them to Bow. "Be good," I said, "and you can have them as soon as she comes home." I understood by now that the bus driver must have taken the kids to the store to buy them sodas and snacks. When Sword got home, she handed me the giant snickers bar she had gotten. "Because I love you," she said. And though I did not want it, there was nothing I could do to make her take it back. She knows I'm not happy about the local custom of having the bus driver treat the kids to unhealthy snacks without a parental consent form.

I went back to Bow and was going to give him the cherries, but he had intentionally thrown up on the floor in the meanwhile. (He can regurgitate at will. When he's being nice, he keeps it in his mouth. We call that chewing his cud.)

"But why? Why did you do that?"

"I don't like you so much," he spelled.

Well, that's okay. Some days I'm not so crazy about him, either. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here in the pen with him, till he changes his mind.

So the Snickers bar and the cherries are on my computer table, uneaten. Eventually, Sword will let me give the Snickers bar back to her. Eventually, Bow will have the cherries. None of it is going to waste. And nobody is going hungry.

Some days are better than others. But we manage to muddle through all of them.

Lessons That I Learned from Reading About Nim

I highly recommend Elizabeth Hess' biography Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. It is an objective, even-handed coverage of Nim's life from the moment of his birth to the day he died. Many people have tried to use the story of Nim Chimpsky as a cautionary tale over the years, but some of the conclusions that they have drawn are completely unwarranted.

Isn't it true that Nim was only signing to please his trainers and that he didn't even know what he was saying? Generations of college students have been taught that this is the lesson to take away from his story. But did you know that long after he had been abandoned by all the humans who were involved in that experiment, and he was confined to a cage in a sanctuary where he was meant to be "humanely" retired, Nim was still trying to communicate with people by signing?

Isn't it true that the tragedy of Nim's life was due to the fact that he was enculturated as a human, but he was really a chimp, and genetic breeding always trumps enculturation? No. The real tragedy of Nim's life is that the people who adopted him did not take their commitment seriously, and they discarded him the moment having him in their lives turned out to be inconvenient. First his adoptive mother, and then his adoptive father, gave up on him, when he was just a little boy. He was shuttled from one caretaker to the next, and every time he developed an attachment, the person was yanked from his life. We know how harmful it is for human children to be brought up this way. It is no less harmful for a chimpanzee.

Isn't it true that Herbert Terrace's involvement with the scientific community is what kept him "honest" about his project, and allowed him to admit that he had no viable results? No. Terrace was constantly engaged in trying to raise funds. Part of the reason he couldn't spend much time with Nim was that he kept having to spend his time trying to get grants and writing up reports. He was so intent on documenting everything that he had a bigger budget for "proof" than he had for spending quality time just being with Nim.

Language doesn't happen in a vacuum. Real language is learned in context, when we try to communicate with one another. Terrace had results, but they weren't nearly as good as he thought they were, because all his time was going into chasing after the funding that he needed to keep going. When he realized there was never going to be enough money to keep Nim and his caretakers going in the manner to which they were accustomed, he shipped Nim off back to the Lemmon farm, and only then did he decide that the experiment was a failure. Not getting the funding influenced Terrace's assessment of the outcome. Nim was not yet an adolescent when that happened. He had years of development ahead of him.  Imagine what would happen to a human child, if parents gave up that easily!

Learning language requires love, a commitment, and the ability to live independently. If every parent expected to make a living off their child, how many children would learn to speak?

Of course, we all have to try to raise funds for our living expenses. But one difference between me and Herbert Terrace is that while I sit here writing this, Bow is sitting right next to me, and listening to me read it out loud!