But partly because of Terrace’s work, and partly because of the perceived difficulty of doing clean, controlled, non-anecdotal experiments on so emotional a being as a chimpanzee, financial support for many of these studies has nearly disappeared. In one case, the colony where apes had been taught Ameslan had fallen on hard times. Years had passed. Support was drying up. No one seemed interested in conversing with the chimps anymore. The grounds had become weedy and overgrown. The inmates were about to be shipped to laboratories for medical experimentation. Before the end, they were visited by two people who had known them in the old days. “What do you want?” the visitors asked in Ameslan. “Key,” two chimps are said to have signed back from behind bars, one after the other. “Key.” They wanted out. They wanted to escape. Their request was not granted.34
——
When chimps approach sexual maturity, their behavior changes. Both sexes are then much stronger than humans and given to occasional, unpredictable bouts of rambunctiousness and violence. So as the chimps get older, almost inevitably the experimenters find themselves driven to use steel cages, collars, leashes, and electric cattle prods. The chimps must feel, bit by bit, betrayed by the humans and less inclined to cooperate in their strange language games. Accordingly, back in the days when the research was generously supported, it was thought prudent to terminate experiments on teaching chimps language—requiring, as it does, close face-to-face daily contact—when they begin to mature. As a result, we do not know what the linguistic abilities of an adult chimpanzee might be. Lucy, like some aging child actor, was forced into retirement just a little after puberty. The laboratory in which she had demonstrated her accomplishments in sign language was closed.
Jane Goodall, who had by then spent a decade and a half living with chimps in the wild, was astonished on meeting Lucy:Lucy, having grown up as a human child, was like a changeling, her essential chimpanzeeness overlaid by the various human behaviours she had acquired over the years. No longer purely chimp yet eons away from humanity, she was man-made, some other kind of being. I watched, amazed, as she opened the refrigerator and various cupboards, found bottles and a glass, then poured herself a gin and tonic. She took the drink to the TV, turned the set on, flipped from one channel to another then, as though in disgust, turned it off again. She selected a glossy magazine from the table and, still carrying her drink, settled in a comfortable chair. Occasionally, as she leafed through the magazine she identified [in Ameslan] something she saw …35
In the second half of her life, Lucy lived with other chimpanzees on a small island in Gambia. Her adjustment to Africa was slow and difficult, and she becamean emaciated, hairless wreck … She had been born and raised in the United States, and in pampered upper-middle-class circumstances … Lucy, the fastidious, toilet-trained chimpanzee princess … slept on a mattress, sipped soda, developed schoolgirl crushes, and would sit in the living room during the afternoon and leaf through magazines.36
But after a year or two in Gambia, thanks to the loving care of Janis Carter, she began to adjust. She had regular contact with humans and was often the first chimp to greet visitors to the island. She was used to humans. Her relations with other chimps were more strained. She had missed out on the rollicking childhood of a chimp in the wild.
In 1987 Lucy’s skeleton was discovered. The most likely reconstruction of events is that humans came to the island, killed Lucy, probably by shooting her, and skinned her body. Her hands and feet, the very organs that had made her famous, were missing.37 Those responsible have never been found.38
ON IMPERMANENCE
In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours; life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: the love of knowledge.
MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations39
* Ring-tailed lemur males will smear a pheromone they generate onto their tails and then wave these prominent, black-and-white-banded appendages at each other, wafting the smell into the air. This is mainly a competition for females: Apparently the most aromatic lemur tends to win the most attractive female. In one lemur species, all adult males may have their tail waves answered in the same evening, because all adult females come into heat together, by the light of the silvery (and full) moon.* Used in panning for gold.* Also called the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. No dishonest intent is implied; it is merely one of those failures of logic that humans are prey to. We tend not to be dispassionate observers.* One expert reviewer likens this sentence to saying that “90% of the materials dug from a gold mine are not gold ore”
Chapter 19
WHAT IS HUMAN?
Having proved mens & brutes bodies on one
type: almost superfluous to consider minds.
CHARLES DARWIN
Notebooks on Transmutation of Species1
We humans are the dominant species on the planet, a status affirmed by several standards—our ubiquity, our subjugation (politely called domestication) of many animals, our expropriation of much of the primary photosynthetic productivity of the planet, our alteration of the environment at the Earth’s surface. Why us? Of all the promising lifeforms—implacable killers, professional escape artists, prolific replicators, nearly invisible beings that no macroscopic predator can find—why did one primate species, naked, puny, and vulnerable, manage to subordinate all the rest and to make this world, and others, its domain?
Why are we so different? Or are we? Unambiguous definitions of humans—definitions that include almost all members of our species, but no one else—can be produced from anatomy or from DNA base sequencing. But they fail the purpose. They explain nothing that we recognize as fundamental about ourselves. Perhaps sometime in the future we will discover that unique sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts encode for particular sequences of amino acids that constitute particular proteins that catalyze particular chemical reactions that motivate particular behavior that we might agree is characteristically human. But so far no such sequence has been found.
If, then, we can discern no clear-cut distinction in our chemistry (or anatomy) that explains our dominant role, the only ready alternative is to survey our behavior. It seems plausible that the sum of our everyday activities would be sufficiently defining, but a surprisingly large number of those activities can be performed by apes. For example, here’s a description of the accomplishments of Consul, the first chimp acquired, in 1893, by the zoo in Manchester, England:[He was] able to put on his own coat and hat, seat himself in his own carriage for a drive, sit at table with company, use his knife and fork with propriety, pass his plate for a fresh supply of food, use his serviette [napkin], wash his hands after meals, put coals on the fire, ring the bell for the maid, go into the kitchen for a romp with the girls, walk into his hotel, shake hands with his friends, kiss the barmaid, smoke his pipe, and mix his own drinks.2