PREFACE
While reviewing books is a little outside of the interest of the Doubting Thomas (DT), as a favor to a friend who is a fervent Believer in Darwinism, the above book was pretty much* read and notes were kept. What better than to write up a review and summarize the notes? And with all the work involved, it might just as well be shared with anyone who may have an interest in "talking" chimps. Because of the play this idea has been getting recently [1997] in the (leftist) Media, this particular view will surely be in the minority, but that is not unusual when discussing some of the beliefs held by those in the field of biology.

Roger Fouts torpedoes his own ship several times in this easy-to-read and somewhat entertaining story of his close friend "Washoe", a chimp. However, the idea he is trying to get across - chimps are genetically (98%) close to us and are really low-level humans - really sinks, rather than flies.

The narrative is the true story of a successful attempt to teach "our (supposed) closest relative" sign language (American Sign Language for the deaf, or ASL) in order to dispel the idea that some people have that chimpanzees are only animals. But the problem is that Fouts goes too far with his experiment and proves, more than once, that they are really just dum-dum animals like all the rest. (More about this). What is surprising, or should be, is the fact that neither he nor those around him, including those at the National Science Foundation and Central Washington University have understood this glaring fact. [See (1) below for an explanation of how close they really are.]

Along the way, he misquotes Darwin⁽²⁾ badly (not hard to do), ignores the contrary opinions of Alfred Russel Wallace⁽³⁾, (considered by most to be the co-founder of Darwin's theory), either as a means to validate his own ideas, or possibly to validate Darwin, or both. But this review is getting ahead of itself and like many reviews, the writer's bias is showing. However, after struggling through all the errors of reason and logic which are used by Fouts to uphold his theme, I just had to get it out.

So Washoe is a chimp who has become surplus to the Space Program, right about the time two Ph.D's from the University of Nevada at Reno were looking for a "pupil". Their plan was to teach ASL to Washoe, in an attempt to discover whether or not it was lack of vocal, rather than mental, ability which prohibited chimps from using a spoken language. Shortly after acquiring "Washoe", Roger Fouts was hired as a research assistant-student to care for the chimp and teach her ASL. All the while, he is studying toward his Ph.D.

"Care" for her is a rather sterile description. But if you include care to mean changing diapers, potty training, bathing, dressing, hugging, kissing, grooming (yes, grooming as well as being groomed), and putting up with the (assumed) fleas along with all sorts of antics peculiar to baby animals, all the while refraining from using any English in the presence of the chimps, it is an accurate description. The book is full of anecdotal sketches of all facets of Life With Washoe, on a detailed basis, until the time she enters the two+ million dollar chimp house built for her and other chimps at CWU. (Meanwhile, lesser 'Darlings of the Left', the Homeless, make do with their dumpsters).

Basically, Fouts describes how the signs are taught, what some of the signs are, the method by which they are used to communicate by the chimps, and so forth. He give us word groups and "sentences" used by the chimps, e.g. "You me go home now"' and does his best to convince the reader that these are a result of conceptual thought. While there are a few episodes he describes which could be interpreted as showing some actual thought process is working (if you knew nothing more about primates), 99% of the "communication" is no different from what you would have with say, a dog. "You me go out" is a common statement of the chimps and I am baffled as to how this is any different than a dog who may want to go for a walk, scratching or whining at the door or using any other sign to communicate with its owner. What the animal is doing is expressing wants and feelings, and with any reflection, it should have been clear that the chimps were just doing the same thing, only using ASL as the medium.

However, Fouts admits well along in the narrative, that he looks upon Washoe as one of his family and loves her as one of his own children, of which he has three (human). So this is Science? You love your test subjects? The conclusion is foregone: Chimps can think.

Two opposing examples to the theme of the book are in order: the first occurs when Washoe has a baby. The baby is sick and taken from her for medication. The baby dies. Fouts regretfully informs Washoe (sign language of course) "baby dead, baby gone, baby finished". Like might be expected in a movie, Washoe "moves to a far corner, looks away, eyes vacant" (paraphrasing Fouts). He is obviously trying to convey the feeling of grief on the part of Washoe, in the same sense that a human would suffer grief under similar circumstances. ('See how Human they are').

But the scenario explodes in his face when he informs us that the next three times he meets Washoe, on three succeeding days, she signs him "baby?"

What is the matter here? Did Fouts use the wrong signs? She is still looking for her baby in spite of being told "baby dead, baby gone, baby finished". So much for "communication". Note that this is after some ten years of it with Washoe. No doubt the Ph.D's have a psychological explanation for it, but the evidence is too plain to ignore. The "idea" just didn't get across: the idea of "death" is a concept, and chimps are unable to understand "concepts", one of the precursors of speech. This episode illustrates very plainly why it is important to stay detached from your test subjects, their grief and other emotions, something that Fouts, Goodall, and other primatologists apparently do not understand.

Another example is even more telling. After teaching Washoe a language for all those years, it was crucial to see if she would pass these language signs on to her offspring. To Fouts, the National Science Foundation and others at CWU, this experiment just HAD to be continued. They assumed that this would be the crowning achievement and final proof that chimps could "think" like humans sometimes do. (This is where they should have stopped, as mentioned above). Of course, as anyone (who knows how fast even lower animals learn) might have expected, Washoe passed the signs right along to an "adopted" daughter, and they "conversed" using them. Hooray!!! But for what are they cheering?

What this phase of the test really proves is not that chimps can communicate, they do that all the time with pants, hoots, grunts and other signs, as do all animals. What this episode shows is that conceptual thought (by humans), has produced a far more efficient way to communicate than chimps have ever been able to devise after the (assumed) 20 Million years in the jungle. Yes, they use "language"; yes, they use "tools". But they understand neither. In 20 M. years chimps have never been able to create one ASL-like word which could be used for, say, defense from predators, such as perhaps distinguishing lions from hyenas. Yet in one random test, in one generation, they find the method so useful that it is passed along to offspring. A major conclusion from this experiment is thus completely missed as to its significance.

Furthermore, the reader is never told about any group conversation between any of the chimps. Did one chimp ever ask another about the weather, "raining out"? How about comments like "Food bad". "Pretty sunset". "Tummy hurt". "Foot sore". Any Jokes? Stories? It must be concluded that essentially what the chimps were doing was "vocalizing" their feelings, the same as all animals do, as mentioned above. The critical step involved in human behavior, conceptualizing a thought, and then expressing it in language, is missing. Anyone who has had a dog for many years, knows that while some of the actions of it seem to be the result of thought, in the last analysis, the actions are a simple result of reflex actions, learned behavior or both. Nothing that a dog communicates to its owner is any more or less intelligent than anything described by Fouts, which he attributed to the chimps. An open-minded appraisal of this outcome should close the books on the question as to whether or not chimps can think. But don't hold your breath.

Also, it ought to be mentioned that the Forward is written by Jane Goodall who figures prominently in areas of the narrative. This should be no surprise, in as much as Fouts' and Goodal's ideas about chimps and the scientific method are so similar. If you enjoy her books, you will enjoy this one. Another darling of the "Left", the late Carl Sagan, is quoted in an inane statement** about chimps, further comment about which will be omitted, as it speaks for itself.

But additional comment about Fouts' quotations from Darwin is in order. It would seem that an unbiased, scientific, presentation would point out that Alfred Wallace, the cofounder with Darwin of his theory, differed sharply with Darwin throughout his life about an animal's ability to think; he maintained that animals lacked a "spiritual nature" and thus were unable to converse, appreciate art, humor, or mathematics. ⁽¹⁾ As a proof of this idea, he points out that the much vaunted action of "natural selection", widely considered by Darwinists to be the cause of evolution, cannot have any effect on a thinking being⁽³⁾.

The book is entertaining if you have an interest in animals. It certainly helps one to understand the psychology of the "Animal Rights Crowd" (a.k.a. the Golden Calf Crowd) if you have problems doing so.

Fouts also makes a blatant appeal for sympathy and support for the chimps, and in doing so conveniently ignores the many opportunities for research on animals that exist which assist humanity, where the chimps would be better used and the money better spent.

No, I don't like to see a caged animal go round and round, but if this research can ultimately release some group of pitiful humans from a wretched state of some kind, it is infinitely preferable. Millions of human beings owe their very lives, today, to the results of medical research performed on animals. In fact, the AMA claims that all medical progress has come about as a result of experiments on animals.

It seems as if the animal rights crowd would rather have it the other way around. But, the Left gets everything else backwards, so why not this idea?

* Some of the animal stories were skipped as there are plenty to satisfy your appetite, including a few seamy ones.

** "How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder." Quoted in the book as a statement of the late Carl Sagan.

(1) Since human DNA (the code for reproduction of all living organisms) consists of about 2 billion instructions, we are talking about a change of some 40,000,000 instructions, a 2% difference. It is important to know that a change in just one instruction out of the 2 billion can make the difference between a normal human, and one with say, Sickle Cell Anemia, a fatal disease. But there is another most important difference which is always omitted from the 2% argument: the other primates have 48 chromosomes as opposed to the 46 chromosomes in a human. This in itself is more than a 4% difference in genetic makeup. To anyone in the least familiar with the folding requirements of both genes and chromosomes, this is a monumental difference, even though it occurs readily in some species that have such a disposition as part of their DNA. For more on this line of discussion see: Darwin's Other Error: Click Here:

⁽²⁾ Lumping all biologists together, it ought to be observed that they don't even believe their own theories. Thus, Darwin's theory clearly holds that if there were an advantage for chimpanzees to have vocal chords, the vaunted "Natural Selection" would have no choice but to furnish them to the chimps. After some 20 M. years, during which time humans evolved, (their beliefs - not necessarily true, or mine) it hasn't. But a cursory look at the human population shows that it is a tremendous advantage (some 6 billion strong) to have them.

So why spend millions of dollars in an effort to, what will ultimately, disprove Darwin's theory?

^{(3) The Alfred Russel Wallace view of evolution: Click Here:}

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