Ranzo Posted June 21, 2018 Posted June 21, 2018 (edited) Koko the gorilla who learned sign language and spoke to our hearts is dead. It feels like we just lost a worldwide treasure. First Snooty the manatee and now Koko is dead. We are running out of beloved animals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/06/21/koko-the-beloved-gorilla-that-learned-to-communicate-using-sign-language-has-died/?utm_term=.4e3dcaa20d30 “Her impact has been profound and what she has taught us about the emotional capacity of gorillas and their cognitive abilities will continue to shape the world.” Here, have some tears. Edited June 21, 2018 by Ranzo Fiddle, Thyndd, Plk_Lesiak and 4 others 1 6 Quote
Archangel Posted June 21, 2018 Posted June 21, 2018 (edited) I don't mean to be funny, but considering what the internet did the LAST time a gorilla died... Edited June 21, 2018 by Archangel Quote
Thyndd Posted June 22, 2018 Posted June 22, 2018 (edited) Oh yeah, I remember reading about Koko some years ago. It was really interesting, though not without controversy. As far as I know, most linguists agree that her use of sign language was very rudimentary, and didn't exhibit the core characteristics that make up a human language, such as proper syntactic rules. In the end, only her caretakers know whether it was mostly staged or that Gorrilla did have human language capabilties. Anyway, there's no denying that she was a very smart Gorrilla, so it's a shame she died 17 hours ago, Archangel said: I don't mean to be funny, but considering what the internet did the LAST time a gorilla died... Dicks out for Harambe Edited June 22, 2018 by Thyndd Quote
tymmur Posted June 28, 2018 Posted June 28, 2018 I can't say I'm surprised, considering she was 46 and gorillas has an expected lifetime of 35-40 years. In other words she was one of the few to become really old. It doesn't change the fact that it's sad news. I will likely never forget when I saw her on TV (or documentary on youtube?) where she talked about her cat and a male gorilla despite both having died years earlier. She said she was sad that her cat died. She had picked the kitten herself and named it Ball because it had no tail, which made it look like a ball. It makes you stop and think when an animal does stuff like that. Quote
haanuman Posted July 16, 2018 Posted July 16, 2018 Wait what? Koko was 46 years old. I did not know that. Well she enjoyed her life and kept us entertained as well. Quote
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