Vol. 4, No. 808
AOL'S CHAT ROOM NO PLACE FOR A SOPHISTICATED
LADY
Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent
Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON,
D.C. -- A 26-year-old celebrity with a Japanese name logged
on to America Online last week to chat with 8,000 fans who had
submitted more than 13,000 questions prior to the April 27 chat room
session.
After 45 minutes of listening to her admirers ask questions such as:
"What's your favorite beverage?" and "What's your favorite
snack?" the
star of the show got bored and went off to play with a toy alligator,
leaving the chat session to her interpreter.
In a gesture of what-am-I-doing-here frustration, Hanabi Ko, the star,
simply covered her face when one chatterer asked if she would ever like
to have a baby of her own.
In the wake of the chat room session, I began to wonder about
intelligence and celebrity among humans and the "lower" animals,
and
admit I came away far more sympathetic to the chat room guest than to
her AOL audience that drove her to distraction that night.
The star I speak of is better known as Koko, the gorilla who has
learned to sign more than 1,000 English words and is said to recognize
more than 2,000 spoken words.
According to an Associated Press story about her cyberspace appearance,
Koko even received a marriage proposal online, to which, by the way,
she did not respond -- smart girl.
An AOL chat room is no place for a sophisticated lady or an intelligent
gorilla.
In case readers weren't among the 8,000 who "chatted" with Koko
on AOL,
they can catch the gorilla's visit to "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood"
when
it airs near the end of next July. (The program was videotaped in
March.)
Her given name is Hanabi ko, which staff at the Gorilla Foundation in
Woodside, Calif. -- her caretakers and promoters -- translate from the
Japanese as "fireworks child." The Japanese word hanabi, or fireworks,
is itself a compound noun that can be translated "fire flowers."
I like
the idea of translating Koko's name as "fire-flowers child."
Koko is pretty amazing for a gorilla. Keep in mind that gorillas have
no vocal cords so speech is not what's important in her learning to
communicate in English.
Dr. Francine "Penny" Patterson, who has lived and worked
with Koko for
over 25 years - beginning as a Stanford U. graduate student -- signs
questions to Koko in American Sign Language. Koko has learned more than
1,000 English words in this signing manner. According to the Gorilla
Foundation, Koko shows comprehension of more than 2,000 spoken English
words.
I can easily downplay Koko's learning and say that my youngest child at
four had a larger vocabulary than this 26-year-old gorilla, but my
child has yet to develop a vocabulary in American Signing beyond
perhaps one or two letters and numbers he was taught in school.
Incidentally, if I sat down with my youngest child and began asking him
questions about his favorite drink and snack, he'd be off playing with
his action figures in a fraction of the 45 minutes Koko put up with
such drivel.
But then, The Associated Press report of Koko's visit to AOL gives us
some insight into the chat room audience's taste. Koko's chat room
conversation ranked as the fifth busiest in AOL history, the press
report said. It trailed the chat room sessions with teen singing group
Hanson, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and the top chat room
busybody, Rosie O'Donnell.
I wonder if those "chat" leaders were asked about their favorite
snack
food. The problem I see is that Koko is being turned into an electronic
celebrity of the human kind, which we humans tend toward in dealing
with the animal world. We have nothing to compare it to but ourselves.
It's difficult to take exceptional animals for what they are and keep
them in their own category. My son could train to swing from tree to
tree for years and he would never be as good at it as the youngest
tree-climbing monkey. Koko is never going to converse in the mindless,
babbling, sarcastic manner we've come to expect in AOL's chat rooms.
That doesn't diminish her achievement as a gorilla. Dr. Patterson
has
devoted her professional life to helping us accept gorillas as
something other than frightening monsters of the jungle who prey upon
blonde maidens. Once in a local zoo, I witnessed a male gorilla descend
from a tree to pat the head of his child who was nursing.
I was surprised and astounded by the show of paternal compassion. Many
experts have pointed out that the only true enemies the gorilla has
ever known are humans. And we can't place the blame fully at the feet
of the guys with guns. The species is endangered less from the
slaughter of hunting than from the encroachment of human development
upon their habitats.
We prove ourselves her enemy when we force Koko to perform to our
expectations. Cyberspace is no place for a signing gorilla. Would we
expect Larry King to conduct interviews in an African lowland? We
haven't helped the animals -- especially the so-called primates -- much
with our attitudes.
We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decide if
we're
descended from them. I like to remind even my Creationist friends that
when God made Adam from the dust of the earth that dust likely
contained the waste of many animals.
If one doesn't compare Koko to any human, one comes away with an
appreciation of awe and wonder at her communication achievement. We
simply can't cast her into our human expectation categories.
That, to me, is the mistake of putting her in an AOL chat room. It
probably would have been more fun to have her chat with Rosie O'Donnell
or Michael Jordan. Then again, we wouldn't want to show up Rosie and
Michael.
Allan R. Andrews is an executive news editor
for The Stars & Stripes in
Washington, D.C. He can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net
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