Koko: The Gorilla Who Talks to People

Hidden in the hills of Northern California

a few miles south of San Francisco, lies Woodside.

One of the wealthiest towns in America.

It is home to a host of celebrities.

Including a western lowland gorilla called Koko...

..whose life challenges everything we think makes us unique.

Over 40 years ago, Penny Patterson set out to discover

if humans and gorillas could ever communicate.

Everyone, when they're a child, has that Dr Doolittle moment

where they think, you know, "If only we could talk to animals."

And here was a chance.

What began as a PhD to teach sign language to Koko

turned into a lifelong relationship.

It seemed like Penny was in love with Koko

in the way in which a mother might be in love with a daughter.

News about Koko made headlines across the world.

'Koko was a particularly intelligent gorilla...'

'Koko is the subject of the longest ongoing ape language...'

But throughout their time together, Penny has had to fight to keep Koko.

The reality that it really would end just didn't enter our minds.

Now, nearly half a century after the project began,

the line between humans and apes is being redrawn.

A court in Argentina has ruled that an orang-utan can be granted

some of the legal rights enjoyed by humans.

What entitles humans to rights that other species

and animals aren't entitled to?

With thousands of hours of footage collected over 44 years,

does Project Koko finally prove that animals can communicate with humans?

And even share their deep thoughts and feelings with us?

Maybe these animals are thinking.

There's a lot more going on in their heads than maybe we thought.

Or are there some things that will always separate us

from our closest relatives?

How human can a gorilla be?

What can her brain do like a human can do?

HEAVY RUMBLE OF KOKO BREATHING

Now that you have your things with you,

how are your emotions right now?

Koko has emotions!

Koko spends almost every day with Penny

and Ron Cohn, who has filmed ever since Project Koko began.

Five, six, seven... Good!

Penny claims that Koko can use over 1,000 words

of American Sign Language

and videos of her online regularly get millions of hits.

'Coco understands spoken English

'and uses of 1,000 signs to share her feelings and thoughts.'

'A giant gorilla with a tiny, tiny, tiny helpless kitten.'

It's rare for anyone other than Penny

and Ron to get close to Koko herself.

But now the BBC has been given unprecedented access

to film Koko for a month...

..and open up the archive of her life to see for ourselves how much

Koko can really communicate

and what daily life is like for the world's most famous gorilla.

Drinks and things. Yeah, yeah.

Penny, what are you planning to do?

Oh, Koko's birthday. Yeah.

This is a big deal. Koko was born on the fourth of July.

So, we're just lining up presents and...

Um, so, did you get the ones in here?

Coco will soon turn 44.

-And this is a T-shirt of love?

-Well, yeah...

'Although gorillas in the wild rarely reach this age,'

captive females can live into their 50s.

But unlike other gorillas,

Koko's birthdays are celebrated with cakes, parties and presents.

It's a life no-one could have predicted when it all began.

Blow it out. Good girl!

KITTEN MEWS

Koko was born to her mother Jacqueline in 1971

in San Francisco Zoo.

'She's accepted the child and she's proceeding to raise it.'

The gorilla population is declining and I think we are, sort of,

becoming a Noah's Ark.

When Koko was born, Penny and Ron were both students nearby

at Stanford University.

'I was a graduate student...'

..and we met at one of Penny's friend's parties, or something.

And I got her phone number.

She was definitely the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

I'm sure you won't put that in! But she was.

Penny was a 24-year-old psychology student at Stanford,

when the field of animal communication

was going through a revolution.

Do this, Viki. HE BLOWS RASPBERRY

CHIMPANZEE BLOWS RASPBERRY

Another sound resembles the letter K.

Viki, sit up, girl. Come on.

Earlier attempts had tried to teach spoken language, for instance.

They don't have... They can't generate the sounds.

They don't have control of the lips and tongue the way we do.

And somebody had the wit to teach sign language, you know,

to his chimp, Washoe.

In the '60s, Washoe was raised like a child by husband and wife

Allen and Beatrix Gardner.

They claimed she could use 350 signs to communicate.

I had attended a lecture by the Gardners at Stanford

and was really interested in that research.

I just felt, this is it, this is what I need to do.

For her PhD, Penny had been visiting San Francisco Zoo

searching for an ape she could teach to sign.

We met with the director and asked if we could work with the gorillas.

We went to see the family - the zoo family - and Koko was in Mom's arms

and she had a sibling who was kind of running around.

Penny asked to work with Koko,

but because gorillas in the wild cling to their mothers

for the first few months of life,

the zoo didn't think it would be fair

to take Koko away from her family.

But when she was just six months old, they were left with no choice.

She was rescued one day from death

and taken to the medical centre for treatment.

She had been strapped down so that they could keep an IV in place

and, basically, save her life.

She contracted shigella, which is a serious intestinal parasite.

The brother to Koko died from it.

Koko was in intensive care and she got through it.

The zoo couldn't return Koko to her mother,

as they feared the group would treat her as an outsider.

So, she was hand-reared for the next six months in the zoo's nursery.

When I came back to the zoo, the keeper recognised me

and said, "Do you want to see Koko?"

And I said, "Of course I do."

And he said, "She's in the children's zoo"

and he took me to see her.

That day, that first day, that we actually got to see her,

she was kind of feisty.

She ran around and gave me a nip on the ankle.

I think, within a few days, Penny started working with Koko

in the nursery at the zoo.

As soon as Penny started to teach sign language to Koko,

Ron began to film, to document their progress.

I decided that it would be good to focus on three signs.

"Eat", "drink" and "more".

Those would come up a lot during keeping Koko going during the day.

Penny began by moulding Koko's hands into different signs,

hoping she would start to use them independently.

It happened pretty fast.

I guess, I was thinking it would take a lot longer, or something.

Early on, Koko picked up around one new sign each month.

Penny made little Koko work.

But Koko was pretty smart.

And soon Penny had noted Koko combining signs to ask for things.

It was like there really was something miraculous happening.

Not quite like stepping on the moon for the first time,

but it was that sort of feeling

that some sort of bridge had been crossed.

Someone really was communicating with an animal

and that animal was communicating back.

I think Koko loved it.

A person that was there with her for so many hours at a time.

So, it was a strong bond to begin with

and, certainly, Koko was very interested in learning language,

or anything at that time.

I think spending their time together with Koko being a baby,

that they bonded the way a mother and a child would bond.

You just don't expect a gorilla to be that way.

You know, everybody thinks King Kong -

big, stupid, dumb-witted

and big and blustery -

and she was small and sweet and creative.

So, it was like raising a kid.

She still very much needed to be on the mom at that age.

KOKO GRUNTS

More than 40 years on, Koko still lives in the same mobile home

she grew up in at the zoo.

But as she's grown to nearly 300 pounds,

the walls have had to be reinforced and a large outside area added.

So, that's how we're going to handle lunch again today...

Whereas wild gorillas will spend hours each day foraging and feeding,

..and then after three it's too late, so then we'll do greens...

Koko's meals are cooked by a team of carers

funded through public donations.

They also give her vitamins, put on her favourite DVDs...

..and even wrap her birthday presents.

The idea of being able to communicate in a shared language

with someone who is not a human -

you're drawn in by that big idea.

And then, when you meet them, it becomes apparent to you

that there is someone inside there that is unique.

I don't think you can walk away when you realise that.

Penny now lives just a few miles from Koko,

so she can spend time with her almost every day.

At the beginning, before I started,

I outlined the project and proposed it to the zoo

and they said, "You're not going to leave after, like, three weeks

"like everybody else, are you?"

And I said, "Oh, no. I'll be here at least four years."

OK.

While Penny drives in and Ron lives on site,

it's unusual for anyone other than the two of them

to go into Koko's enclosure.

But since the crew had started filming,

Koko had been keen to meet them.

OK, you want Johnny to come in?

OK, you're going to be...

..good.

OK.

If you're an animal person, it's like, "Of course!"

But if you're not, it's... "Oh, my God!" kind of response.

"Is this real?"

Smelling my hand? Where are we going?

We want him to go into the other room. Go there.

She takes a lot of care and a lot of time

and that doesn't change over time.

So, we spend as much time almost as we ever did.

Let me just hit record quickly. There you go.

Koko picked up 80 signs in her first two years at the zoo,

but distractions from the public

were making it difficult to progress further.

So, Penny asked if she could take Koko with her

to Stanford University.

We got the zoo to loan Koko to us.

So, in 1974, we moved her down to Stanford.

Now that Koko was on campus, Penny could dedicate all of her time

to the project.

And away from the zoo, Koko's vocabulary increased dramatically.

People tend to learn language at an exponential rate.

Hers was slightly different, but she learned fast.

I mean, she didn't forget things.

It was amazing, every day or every week some new incredible thing

would happen, or new words - she picked them up constantly.

When I first met Koko, I was introduced as a friend.

Which is a sign made like that.

And she saw me, took a really hard look at me

and then signed - "please friend open hurry."

And I was stunned by this.

Both the spontaneity and clarity of her signing

was unlike anything I'd ever seen.

After a year at Stanford, Penny claimed that Koko's vocabulary

had more than doubled to nearly 200 words.

And news of a talking gorilla was spreading through campus.

I was a student at Stanford, an undergraduate,

and a friend of mine said this woman is doing this amazing thing,

teaching sign language to a gorilla.

And I was like, "You have got to be kidding?!"

Going back as far as you can think,

people have tried to know what's the consciousness of an animal.

And so, to suddenly say, here is a project that's actually

operating within that realm is fundamentally fascinating.

So, I met Penny and Koko.

Then I invited them to come up to this ranch here where we are now.

She literally first experienced that level of freedom,

which is to say running around in a very open, wild place.

Unconnected by lead, or chain, or anything else, just nothing on her.

There was something beyond the fact that this was a language experiment

and it was obvious even then.

It seemed like, you know, Penny was in love with Koko

in the way a mother might be in love with her daughter.

Except, you know, your daughter has the strength of ten men.

So, here's Koko's morning update from Ann.

She's having a good morning, she woke up at 9am.

She was already moving...

Now, even when she isn't with Koko, Penny receives regular updates

from her team.

Sophia was successful with breakfast,

she took 26 ounces a fluid.

And she's in a good mood and asking for her visitors. Lots of visitors.

And she's been asking for BBC visitors!

She said, "Do you want a boy or a girl?"

-And so, Koko was kind of, "Boy, boy, boy, boy!"

-Yes.

-A-ha!

She is dissatisfied with the visitors that they are providing

-and keeps asking for additional visitors.

-Better visitors!

-Yes!

The ones with the accents!

She's a mother in every form of the word.

I mean, that is her girl and she's going to make sure

that everything that she can possibly do for her is done.

Figure out where Koko is.

-Oh, there she is.

-We have a 24-hour camera on Koko.

Penny uses that whenever she is not at the research office.

She's, basically, always monitoring and checking in on Koko.

When I first started working here, that was what hit me

the hardest, is when I'm with Penny here, working here,

that's Penny's work time and when she hits the research office

and goes in with Koko, that's her family time. That's her downtime.

That's not work any more, that's hanging out with her daughter,

hanging out with Ron, that's the unit.

Uh-huh! That's new, it's a tickle stick! Good!

They became a family.

I mean, Koko, Ron and Penny are, in every sense of the word, a family.

Thank you, darling. This is good! Thank you.

You wanted John... To show him. You can have it.

OK. Yes, it's a great tickle stick.

Koko relied on them as much as they needed her.

And to break that up would have been devastating for not only Penny,

but for Koko.

Penny's project had become something far more than a PhD.

But, ultimately, Koko still belonged to San Francisco Zoo.

I guess Koko was on loan. She knew it could end at any time.

But the reality that it really would end

just didn't enter our minds until it happened.

Four years after the project began,

the new director of the zoo was demanding Penny give Koko back.

We, of course, in zoos, attempt to treat them as normal animals

and leave them as wild as they possibly can be

because that's what I think they should be.

That's the way they should be left.

The right thing to do was to take the animal away

out of that project and put it in a family of gorillas.

That's typical zoo mentality in those days.

They had no clue that these animals had emotions like that,

deep emotions.

So, taking Koko away from Penny was nothing to them.

Gorillas like Koko are endangered in the wild,

so some zoos commit to breeding them in captivity.

And that's what they wanted. They wanted Koko back to send her to...

I think it was LA, on a breeding loan.

But I'm sitting there looking at this project at Stanford going,

"How can you possibly treat Koko the same way you would just treat

"any gorilla in any zoo?

"She's been raised by this human from birth,

"not like any other gorilla, and she's been doing this

"language project and you're going to summarily just say,

"'That project's over,' and she's going to go to

"a zoo somewhere to get bred?" I was outraged.

The maternal instincts...

kick in and, you know, not on your life.

When something's important, I do what it takes to make it happen.

And this was probably the most important thing in my life.

And still is.

Penny started a campaign to keep Koko,

trying to get enough support to force the zoo to change its mind.

At that time, the zoo belonged to the city of San Francisco,

so if we could get to the right sort of people politically,

maybe we could do something about it.

And, in fact, through various connections,

we, ultimately, did get to the mayor, who had a lot of power over

the zoo, and we managed to get terms for the acquisition of Koko.

The zoo set a price of 12,500 to buy Koko.

But, because her species is endangered, it would only let

her go if Penny and Ron could find a male as a potential future mate.

And that was their ace in the hole because nobody...

..is allowed to bring gorillas in the country,

no-one in the zoo community has been able to do it.

The 1973 Endangered Species Act set out to protect animals

in their native habitat, preventing the import

and export of animals such as gorillas.

But those in captivity before 1973 could still be moved.

And an animal dealer in Europe was offering a young gorilla

for sale on that basis.

We never really knew the origin of Michael.

He might have, in fact, been captured in the wild.

Maybe his parents were killed, we don't know.

Michael was bought mainly with public donations

and shipped from Vienna to California to meet Koko.

We went up to the airport and Michael...

he just jumped on me,

put his arms around me, and then, he sunk his teeth into my shoulder.

Sunday, 11 o'clock, we are

bringing Mikey in to see Koko for the first time.

We knew that Koko needed a companion.

PENNY LAUGHS

She had to "grow up gorilla"

as well as in an environment that was more complex.

So, they had to work things out socially.

Michael had kind of a harsh beginning.

But he was adorable,

he was just really one of the cutest little gorillas I had ever seen.

Ann Southcombe would look after Michael

and try to teach him to sign.

And when he was old enough, they hoped he and Koko would mate.

I first would ride him on my bike.

I had a platform and he would just sit and hold on to my shoulders.

We got along really well and it was like having my own gorilla.

With the arrival of Michael,

Penny had finally met the conditions to buy Koko through her newly

formed Gorilla Foundation and,

before she had even finished her PhD,

she had suddenly committed to something far bigger than

a language experiment.

I have to laugh at myself.

I saw a family of people walking down the street,

six or seven children and I thought, "Oh, my God, who would ever

"want to tie themselves down with that many kids?"

And then I laughed, because, a minute later I thought,

"What am I doing? I've got myself tied down with gorillas!"

And I just had to laugh because it's the same thing.

It may even be more of a burden but I just...

I love every minute of it.

If I had a job in a bookstore, I would be doing this on my weekends.

What else have we got that I'm forgetting?

Oh, shoot, yes.

It was like raising kids.

I mean, I'd done enough of that with my younger siblings.

I sort of grew up being an assistant to my mom, learning everything

about the diapers, the bottles, the sterilisation in those days.

Everything that was done was like second nature.

There were enough younger siblings that I did it

over and over and over! Erm...

The youngest brother, he was just a few years old

when my mother got cancer.

I came home and, erm, helped take of her.

She passed away when I was a freshman in college.

-Do you ever want children, Penny?

-You know,

I sort of did, but then I thought about it.

I don't think I was made for it.

I think I was made for what I'm doing.

Gorillas rely on strong social bonds,

living in groups of up to 30 in the wild.

But, by the time Koko was seven, she couldn't be further from her kind.

Having an article in National Geographic in 1978

made a big difference.

Koko took the picture that's on the cover of the magazine.

I think she really got famous after that.

Once the media attention of a signing gorilla got out there,

that was the beginnings of this whole thing exploding.

In 1979, seven years after the project began, Penny published

her PhD on the linguistic capabilities of a lowland gorilla,

not only claiming that Koko knew over 300 signs,

but that she used them to convey deep and complex emotions.

Koko has learned to express a number of feeling states.

I routinely ask her how she's feeling in the morning

and some days she says, "Happy, fine."

Other days, "Sad."

Her abilities to simply recognise herself in the mirror,

she is able to point to that image and say, "That's me,"

which indicates consciousness itself.

She has this self-consciousness like a person does.

Michael was also making progress with signing.

But, while Penny's findings were seen as a major breakthrough

by the media, there were some scientists who were less convinced.

If you know her and know the context,

it's very easy to believe. Penny believes it.

I think the public probably believes it but, you know,

tell it to a behavioural scientist and they get apoplectic.

And they did...get apoplectic.

I believe that Penny Patterson is an overzealous mother

who is very proud of her surrogate children

and tends very much to project meanings onto those children

that may not be apparent to another observer.

Herb Terrace became the voice of the critics of the experiments.

And he had extra credibility because he had done one.

Professor Herbert Terrace of Columbia University had

conducted a similar language study with a chimp called Nim.

During the first three years of the project,

I was convinced that Nim knew sign language.

In fact, I wrote an article for Science.

It was called Can A Chimpanzee Create A Sentence?

And the implication was yes.

One day, I visited a laboratory and I was watching a videotape

that I had seen many times.

And that was the first time I saw how the teacher prompted

whatever Nim was signing.

When I noticed that there was a simple explanation to Nim signing,

namely that he was responding to prompts,

it was as if this whole...

..empire collapsed.

And that was it.

That's the nature of science. You call it as you see it.

Herb went on to criticise Project Koko,

arguing Koko was just imitating Penny to get rewards.

He wasn't at the periphery,

he wasn't a young graduate student, he was a well-established

scientist and so many people took that as definitive.

From the very beginning of these experiments, there was

a yawning gap between what you could see what these animals were doing

and what you might believe...

And what you could prove these animals were doing.

Koko's situation tended to leave the strict scientific

protocols behind and just were, "Hey, we have this gorilla that does

"have sign language facility, no doubt about it."

You form a very close emotional bond.

They look you in the eye just the way a baby does.

It's as if you're reading their soul and you're assuming that they

understand what you're saying, just as you might with a baby.

But the fact of the matter is,

apes have no idea about another individual's mind.

There are people who see animals as just wind-up toys -

without any consciousness, without any sense of wonder,

ability to think or to communicate.

And, to me, that's a very boring world.

There's no question Penny Patterson has a very powerful

relationship with Koko.

Whether it's the kind that's going to produce language,

that's an entirely different question.

After Herb's findings, parts of the scientific community

were turning their backs on the ape-language experiments.

And, with Penny's PhD now finished,

Stanford were unwilling to let her remain on campus.

The era of the ape-language experiments appeared to be

coming to an end.

I think it just became harder for people to get funding to do things.

You're competing for scarce resources,

it's not going to make it easier if one of the eminences

of the field has basically said this is nonsense.

Nonsense is not worth pursuing.

So, basically, you had two types of scientist.

There were those who would, essentially, abandon their apes

to maintain their ties to the scientific community...

and then, there were those who abandoned their ties to

the scientific community to maintain their ties to the apes.

And Penny falls into that latter group.

Penny moved her gorillas to a new home in Woodside,

where she has carried on with Project Koko ever since,

convinced there is more to an ape's mind than Herb Terrace claimed.

I did actually look at the Nim original tapes.

He WAS signing, but there wasn't one figure for Nim.

There were 25, maybe, that came and went.

It's so difficult because it's based on relationships.

It's not just based on, you know, open the cage, new person,

feed, ask question - they want to talk with someone they like.

Since her PhD,

Penny has only published a small proportion of her data.

But, even now, she and her team make daily notes on Koko's signing

and Ron continues to film everything for their record.

It's a commitment...

..because they are like real people.

And she's dependent on people for everything.

Koko was like a child. She's still like a child.

A child that you have to keep all the time, she never leaves home.

Michael, go get the food ready and Ron will sit right here with you.

Ron, do you ever wonder what life would have been like

if Penny hadn't met Koko? It could have been so different.

I guess it would be today. It's hard to know.

I'm 71 now and that's a long time.

I started with Koko when I was 27.

Since the '80s, there have barely been any new attempts

to teach an ape to sign.

Some of the early experiments continued.

But, today, the field of animal communication has moved on

to how they communicate with each other, rather than with humans.

But recent studies have suggested that

although only Koko and Michael use American Sign Language, gorillas use

more than 100 gestures of their own to communicate within their groups.

Refreshments. One for each gorilla. One for Mikey.

Can you say "drink", Mikey?

You can say "candy". Good. I can help you with drink. OK.

By the time Penny and her gorillas had settled at Woodside,

Koko had reached breeding age...

That was good, but let's leave the glass in one piece.

..but Michael was younger...

Michael, you just are being a bit obnoxious!

..and not yet mature enough to mate.

Koko, calm down. That's enough.

Koko was always wanting to be maternal, even at a young age.

We started by asking her what she wanted for her birthday

awhile back and she was always, "Baby!"

She wanted a real baby, basically.

Someone else to love and take care of.

Gorillas nurse their young for up to three years and,

without offspring of her own, Koko has always been given dolls

and toys to play with and nurture.

OK, come out, kids!

You can do all the scientific studies in the world

and it doesn't reach the masses.

And the public probably doesn't really care if...

"When was the last time you did a double-blind study?"

They DO care to see a gorilla

gently holding a kitten.

One of our volunteers had discovered a litter of kittens.

She was able to just bring them to work and Koko pointed to one,

and then, she continued to select that one.

His full name was All Ball. We called him Ball

because he looked like one.

So, she adopted him and he was just crazy about her.

I think the notion that this immensely powerful animal

would be tender towards this very small

and helpless little creature sort of captures people's imagination.

Around six months, unbeknownst to us, he started leaving the property.

And he was hit by a car on the road.

Koko was devastated.

When she was asked, "Where do you go when you die?"

She signed, "Comfortable hole, goodbye."

And Penny took that as meaning that she understood.

What happened to Ball?

"Koko have sorry, have Koko-love."

"Unattention visit..." He doesn't visit you any more.

Penny's reports of Koko's grief

and search for a new kitten made news around the world.

You tell me what kind of kitty you would like if you get another one.

It looks unbelievable but Koko the gorilla indicated,

several weeks ago, she was ready for a new friend.

OK, she's pointing to this one.

"Cat gorilla have visit Koko-love."

"Good," she'd like to have another cat visit. "DO visit." "Do." OK.

The world has moved towards Penny's point of view, even if

the scientific community doesn't want to acknowledge

Penny's point of view.

Public opinion is really much more open to animal intelligence

than the scientific community.

A 15-stone female gorilla called Koko was given a new baby today,

a tiny ginger kitten she had chosen from a picture.

You know, the media, it was saturated.

It was turned into a children's book.

Which was used in schools in 48 of the 50 states.

So, every Third Grader would get to read Koko's Kitten.

They loved it. We got letters and letters like you wouldn't believe.

For a time, there was a generation...

If you were to say Gorilla Foundation, "Never heard of it."

If you were to say my name, "Never heard of it."

If you were to say "gorilla and kitten" or "Koko and kitten",

they had heard of it.

There, there!

Koko now was a very famous gorilla.

It's not like the days at Stanford when

she could walk around unrecognised. Koko is a very...

She's been on the cover of National Geographic magazine twice.

Would you sign your name?

That's better. That's much better.

That's very good.

Koko was now known the world over.

But, in her lifetime,

two thirds of Western lowland gorillas had died out.

OK, now would you like to do some colouring?

And fame was turning Koko into an ambassador for the plight

of a species she'd barely met.

Tell me what you want me to do.

-Oh.

-PENNY LAUGHS

-Where is he?

-He's inside.

-Does he... Does she understand when you speak?

-Oh, yeah.

'Being in the media made it much easier to raise money to

'support the project.'

Oh, she wants to see nipples.

'And I learned that, in order to keep it going, to grow,

'you need to continue to work with the media.'

The high public profile helped her gain some funding.

But you choose a path, you have to keep doing it.

And you have to keep going year after year after year.

Koko became the most famous gorilla in the world.

She had her own range of toys and even her own credit card.

But her life was moving further

and further away from that of a gorilla in its natural environment.

There's a good side and a bad side, obviously, to branding an animal...

Nothing... Again, nothing's black and white.

I think the good side is she has raised

a lot of awareness for gorillas.

People might not care about gorillas if it wasn't for what they've

learned through Koko.

But Koko really was born in captivity, so she has never seen

a gorilla group and gorillas that have to survive as gorillas, so...

GORILLA CHATTERS

We're going to put the footstool here.

The thing she's missing is just being a gorilla.

We were looking forward to Koko having a family of her own.

Baby.

You were playing nicely with the baby.

Wild gorillas usually begin to reproduce around the age of ten

and every four years after that.

But, by the time Koko was 20,

she still had not mated with Michael, her childhood companion.

One of us asked her, "Why don't you want to mate with Michael?"

And the fact is that she considered Michael a brother

and gorilla females do have an incest taboo.

Penny made it her mission to try to find a new mate for Koko.

We're going to put on a videotape, do you know how to do that?

You got it out of the case, good. Now, where do we put it?

Even showing her videos of potential suitors from zoos around the world.

It's a gorilla!

KOKO KISSES THE SCREEN

You kiss him.

I went to zoo meetings and I made a plea for a gorilla family

and they just kind of laughed me off the stage but one of them

took pity on me and said, "Well, I have a male gorilla."

Cincinnati Zoo agreed to loan a male called Ndume

to the Gorilla Foundation.

And he was flown to California with the hope he would mate with Koko.

-NEWSREADER:

-'And, finally, to America

'where it's claimed a famous gorilla

'called Koko has found a new mate through video dating.'

OK, here it comes.

You can go in, Koko.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

Just having Koko raised by a human from birth,

and then a gorilla brought in from wherever...

..doesn't automatically mean you're going to get a baby.

I don't know who Koko identifies with.

I don't know who she daydreams about.

I would expect that, as a female,

she'd want to have a baby of some sort.

But she might be a little confused about with whom.

She knows she's a gorilla and she does like Ndume.

But she likes people, too.

So, she's, like, in both worlds.

Koko and Ndume have never produced offspring.

OK, look. This is the one Koko licked.

But Penny still hasn't given up hope that Koko can have a family

-with him.

-That's the one!

That's the one. OK, so, Koko wants to have a gorilla family.

'That's still her biggest wish.'

And she would like to have a baby to raise. She pointed to that.

Right here. She pointed to that one.

That would give her a focus, she'd be a lovely mother.

Ndume still lives at the Gorilla Foundation,

but Michael has passed away.

And now, when Penny isn't there,

Koko always has a carer with her during the day.

But who?

KOKO KISSES

You'll have a visit soon, yeah.

But she doesn't often see new people

and had been asking for a visit from the crew.

Hi, Koko. How are you?

KOKO PURRS

Very happy, huh?

Oh, are you in a good mood?

I'll just set up.

Oh, is my shirt coming down?

What you doing in there, Koko?

Are you working me out? SHE PURRS

Koko, you're tickling him.

OK. Koko, you don't like people touching you.

You have to be the same.

Tickles, tickles and more tickles.

So, you having a nice day, Koko?

Is there anything you regret, Penny?

Giving Koko a baby. You know, providing a family.

I think that's her regret.

She wants to be a mom.

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday, dear Koko

# Happy birthday to you. #

You feel very conscious that this wasn't Koko's choice.

Oh, yeah, it wasn't, it was mine.

It was an opportunity that, well, was just amazing.

It doesn't mean that it's, you know, the best thing for her.

You know, she'd be more fulfilled

if we had been successful building a family group here.

-That's it!

-Yay!

It may never be possible to establish with certainty just

how much Koko can communicate with humans,

but her life continues to challenge just what it is that makes

humans distinct from other animals.

I think we're living in a different world than the world that

prevailed at the point at which these experiments got going.

It was a world where, really,

animals did not get the benefit of the doubt in terms of

acknowledging that maybe they might have higher mental abilities.

And then, think of where we are today,

it's an entirely different world.

Now, in what's thought to be a legal first,

a US animal-rights group is calling on a New York court

to recognise a chimpanzee as a legal person.

Where the line is drawn between humans

and other apes has been at the heart of Project Koko since it began.

A court in Argentina has ruled that an orang-utan can be granted

some of the legal rights enjoyed by humans.

And now what separates us from our closest relatives is being

argued in the courts,

with some campaigning for apes to be treated as individuals

with rights of their own.

There's an ongoing question about whether we should keep

an intelligent great ape in captivity.

Is it fair for Koko to be somewhat isolated from other apes?

I think that ship sailed so many years ago that you can't go back.

I think Project Koko shows, you know,

these are sensitive animals, they're highly intelligent animals

and you can't just dump them in a cage and leave them there.

Gorilla!

We evolve as a species and we do get more compassionate

and we are becoming more compassionate.

Anything that opens the eyes of humans

that these animals feel and think and love life is a plus.

You know, to make us a more compassionate species.

Remember that old car? Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, it's disgusting.

I wouldn't want every gorilla to be a signing human gorilla but,

boy, I'm glad she's here. And the dedication Penny has,

it's something that will never happen again.

Whatever it is, it's not a good idea.

There's something special about gorillas being gorillas.

But there's also something very special about Koko.

-Want to climb up there?

-She's not a pet, you know?

She's an individual person with her own...

ability to communicate and have feelings and all those things.

There's mosquitoes in these woods.

The statistics and when she learned

100 words to 1,000 words, nobody's going to really remember that

and it's not going to change their behaviour.

But the fact that Koko can love, that we can love each other

even though we're difference species,

really gets people thinking deeply about life.

And that's what we need to do.