Inspirational People: Washoe
Nov 5th, 2007 by Ann
Washoe the chimp isn’t technically a person, but she got pretty damn close to communicating with people and helping us understand why and how chimpanzees communicate. On October 30th, 2007, she died at the age of 42 from natural causes.
Born in West Africa, she was adopted at 10 months by R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix T. Gardner. She was the first chimp to be taught American Sign Language and had a vocabulary of 250 words.
However, it was not contested whether Washoe actually used sign language in the way that humans do, ie to communicate independently and not just imitate. The Gardners argued though that there had been moments when Washoe signed without prompts and that their further research into using lexigrams showed a clear overlap with human methods of communication. She was at the forefront of research and moved the debate forward.