RIP Washoe 1965-2007

Every now and then an individual comes along who challenges all the paradigms and shifts the way we think about science.  One such individual was Washoe, the chimpanzee, who passed away at 42 on Wednesday October 30.  Washoe was remarkable since she learned over 250 words of sign language, and taught sign language to three other, younger chimps who survive her: Tatu, 31, Loulis, 29, and Dar, 31.

Before Washoe, chimpanzees used to appear on morning TV shows and in circuses in demeaning costumes.  Usually these were young animals, adorable and not as dangerous as a strong adult chimp with canines and incredible musculature.  Washoe was central to a project intiated by Allen and Beatrix Gardener and continued by Roger and Debra Fouts at the University of Central Washington.  

In 1967, the Gardners established Project Washoe to teach the chimp ASL. Previous attempts to teach chimpanzees to imitate vocal languages had failed. Roger Fouts was a graduate student of the Gardners.

For Washoe to be considered reliable on a sign, it had to be seen by three different observers in three separate instances. Then it had to be seen 15 days in a row to be added to her sign list.

The Gardners tried to make Washoe's environment as similar as they could to what a human infant with deaf parents would experience. Researchers communicated with Washoe by sign language, minimizing the use of spoken words.

Jane Goodall has been quoted as saying that "Roger, through his ongoing conversations with Washoe and her extended family, has opened a window into the cognitive workings of a chimpanzee's mind that adds new dimension to our understanding."  Jane Goodall herself brought us the complexity of life as a wild chimpanzee, but Washoe stretched the boundaries between our two closely related species by learning to communicate directly with her human colleagues.

It should be noted, everyone agrees that Washoe was herself an unusually gifted chimpanzee of very high intelligence.  But breaking through this barrier meant that chimpanzees thought and felt more like us than we ever imagined. Jane Goodall was accused of anthropomorphizing the animals she had named and recounted the behavior of in very human terms.  But Washoe made it possible that the communication between humans and chimpanzees was perhaps a continuum rather than a sudden difference.  It became possible to belive an animal had a soul. I believe the possiblity that primates like Washoe could communicate and learn symbolic language led to better care for all research primates, a legacy which will live on even as researchers try to fully understand communication and language evolution.  Even if Noam Chomsky is correct, and Washoe didn't possess real human language, the idea that she might is so powerful and good for her species and other wild primates that this research has been tremendous.

Washoe continued to sign to the humans in her life up until the day she died of advanced age, requesting a drink of water as her final sign.  There will be a memorial for her on November 12 at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at the Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington.