A documentary film A Conversation with Koko, which was shot in 1999, tells a story of a gorilla named Koko, who demonstrates profound intellectual ability and a sensitive emotional character. The film evokes mixed feelings, as it explores the areas which humankind is not yet at ease with, such as the possibility of a developed cognitive and emotional intelligence akin to those of humans within other species. What is shown in the film elicits an intense emotional response, as it hints that the way humanity perceives itself and other species in general, is not as black and white as it may seem.
The idea of talking animals has fascinated humankind for a long time, and this may be the case why Koko’s story does not leave the spectator indifferent. However, the first thing that comes to mind while watching the film is the intense anthropomorphizing of Koko by her caregivers. Essentially the film presents only the interpretations and opinions of Penny and Ronald in regards to Koko’s behavior – there is a perceptible lack of impartial stance on Koko’s abilities.
Humans tend to anthropomorphize animals and even inanimate objects, and view them through a human lens, endowing them with certain emotions and characteristics inherent to people. The more the object or the animal looks like a human, the more this process takes place. This is especially vivid with dolls and human-like stuffed animals, for instance. The same happens when the people in the film give certain names to Koko’s paintings. They base the naming on what they themselves see in the pictures and how they interpret what they see, be that something that reminds them of a bird, a bouquet, or a fruit. Penny and Ronald suggest that Koko has the same perception of time, the same emotional response and understanding of love and death as humans do, when she supposedly mourns the death of her kitten, for example. Thus, the film is filled with Penny and Ronald’s interpretations of Koko’s behavior, significantly lacking observation and analysis of it.
In the film, Penny seems to rationalize Koko’s set of signs, which makes it more about how Penny wants Koko’s answers to look like, rather than detecting whether Koko’s signs reflect any sentence structure or possess characteristics of language. In her explanations, Penny gives information about the number of words and sings that she was able to teach Koko, but does not provide any information on whether Koko learnt any general rules intrinsic to any language. This makes research methods demonstrated in the film look like it lacks scientific evidence and, therefore, validity.
The fact that Koko was grown up by a human is also hard to underestimate, as it is somewhat expectable that she would imitate certain gestures, like it is done within the animal kingdom in the wilderness. The question arises whether it would be more beneficial for language studies to conduct suchlike research observing gorillas and their ways of communication in the wilderness. Despite the fact that the majority of Koko’s life was conditioned by humans, it could have been helpful to put Koko in a sanctuary and observe the way she would commute with other gorillas. It is unclear whether she would have continued using the gestures learnt from Penny, or if she would adapt to the gestures used by the gorillas in the wild.
As any other social species, gorillas have a number of ways of communication, such as tactile, vocal, and displayed. However, it is far from obvious if any other species, including gorillas, possess linguistic abilities, as Patterson claims. Judging by the footage from the film, it is hard to find out if there are any linguistic patterns that Koko gripped, or if it is simply an imitation of Penny’s gestures and recognition of certain objects. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether Koko’s studies have contributed significantly to human evolutionary studies. Nevertheless, a study like this conducted with less emotional bias would undoubtedly be a crucial asset in language and human evolutionary studies.