| | Attempts have been made to teach a gorilla named ''Koko'' a form of [[sign language]], although this is highly questionable.<ref>As part of her research into animal communication in 1972, a young graduate student in developmental psychology volunteered to teach sign language to a 1-year-old female Gorilla named Koko. [http://www.las.uiuc.edu/alumni/news/fall2003/03fall_Patterson.html] </ref> | | Attempts have been made to teach a gorilla named ''Koko'' a form of [[sign language]], although this is highly questionable.<ref>As part of her research into animal communication in 1972, a young graduate student in developmental psychology volunteered to teach sign language to a 1-year-old female Gorilla named Koko. [http://www.las.uiuc.edu/alumni/news/fall2003/03fall_Patterson.html] </ref> |
| − | Some scientists believe that Koko's ability to communicate through ASL is equivalent to a [[parrot]]'s ability to communicate through speech - that is, that it is mere mimicry, not communication at all. Some scientists believe that Koko is only trained to make hand gestures but does not actually understand what she is doing. Young earth [[creationist]]s believe that gorillas were [[creation|created]] about 4000 years ago. According to [[Theory of evolution|evolutionary]] thought, humans shared a common ancestor with gorillas as recently as four to seven million years ago.<ref>Hobolth A, Christensen OF, Mailund T, Schierup MH (2007) Genomic Relationships and Speciation Times of Human, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla Inferred from a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model [http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0030007 PLoS Genet 3(2)]</ref> | + | Some scientists believe that Koko's ability to communicate through ASL is equivalent to a [[parrot]]'s ability to communicate through speech. Some scientists believe that Koko is only trained to make hand gestures but does not actually understand what she is doing. Young earth [[creationist]]s believe that gorillas were [[creation|created]] about 4000 years ago. According to [[Theory of evolution|evolutionary]] thought, humans shared a common ancestor with gorillas as recently as four to seven million years ago.<ref>Hobolth A, Christensen OF, Mailund T, Schierup MH (2007) Genomic Relationships and Speciation Times of Human, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla Inferred from a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model [http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0030007 PLoS Genet 3(2)]</ref> |