It’s like Tarzan in reverse. A baby ape is separated from its mother in sad circumstances, very nearly dies. It is rescued, by humans, one in particular, called Penny, who adopts it – adopts her; she’s a female western lowland gorilla, known as Koko. Penny becomes Koko’s mother; Koko is brought up among humans, lives like them, learns their ways ... She learns to talk, using sign language. Not Tarzan of the Apes, then; this mirror version could be called Koko of the People. Actually, the documentary – which spends time with Koko (now 44) and Penny Patterson (69) in northern California, and looks back over their life together using footage filmed by Penny’s colleague Ron – is called Koko: the Gorilla Who Talks to People (BBC1).
Koko hasn’t just learned more than 1,000 words; she communicates complex emotions to Penny. Project Koko is the longest ever exploration into interspecies communication and it has changed the way we think about animal consciousness. Swinging back to Tarzan for a moment, there’s even a Jane, though he’s a he, and a gorilla (this is Tarzan in reverse, don’t forget). A male named Michael is shipped in from Europe, to be Koko’s boyfriend.
Sadly, it doesn’t work out between them (sadly mainly for Koko, who can communicate things such as sadness, remember). Or, later with another male from Cincinnati Zoo called Ndume. They don’t do the business, and Koko doesn’t get to have the baby she’s told Penny she so longs for. Not that Penny has entirely given up. Maybe one of Koko’s celebrity pals – Sting, or Isabella Rossellini, or Leonardo DiCaprio – can pay for IVF. Or how about a human egg donor? That would be interesting …
Wait, though! Because suddenly, here’s this Professor Herbert Terrace saying it’s all nonsense. Not that Penny and Koko have a close bond, that’s undisputed, but the language thing. Herb says Koko just … well, apes Penny, I’m afraid, to get rewards. And Prof Herb isn’t a random he was head scientist on a similar language project with chimpanzees, who originally thought there was something in it, before changing his opinion, based on evidence, and lack of proof. Whereas everyone else we’ve heard from until now – the believers, aside from Penny and Ron themselves – has been a friend, or a former volunteer of the project, or Penny’s personal assistant. Unsurprisingly the scientific community tends to agree with Herb.
And I’m feeling a little disappointed, cheated even, to be honest. Not just because I – like almost everyone else it seems – wanted to believe in the romantic Tarzan-in-reverse (Nazrat?) story, the baby ape who learned to talk and share her feelings with the beautiful blonde human raising her. But also by the fact that it’s taken until more than halfway through the documentary to get to any kind of scepticism. And by the title even. Wouldn’t Koko: the Gorilla Who Probably Doesn’t Talk To People have been more accurate, if a bit clumsy and less OMG-I-must-watch-that?
Hey, I’m no scientist, I don’t know. But I do know I found it all a bit uncomfortable: Koko having birthday parties, and cake, and wrapped presents, and living in a trailer that doesn’t look very big or like anything a gorilla should be living in (certainly nothing like the western lowlands or even Gorilla Kingdom at London Zoo). And her unbuttoning of the cameraman’s shirt, her thing about nipples: isn’t that a bit creepy? It made me wonder if it might have been better – for Koko and Penny – if Koko had gone back to live with her own at the zoo. What’s that, Koko says no that wouldn’t have been better, it would have made her terribly depressed? Well then …
To Versailles (BBC2), where an African prince arrives, with his entourage including a blue-and-yellow macaw (maybe he came via South America). Quite a frosty reception they get … Oh, I see, not just racism; it seems the father of Queen Maria Theresa’s baby (the one who wasn’t drowned, remember) isn’t the dwarf (who was) but this prince. Hence Louis’s frostiness, though he does want to do business. Do business as in plunder his nation, not do the business, which is what he’s doing with all the ladies. Also: scaffolding, highway robbery, strangulation and some truly awful lines. My favourite is Henriette moaning “even as the tide takes me” during a (the) business meeting with Louis. And nipples, too. I think Koko might enjoy Versailles.
