Official Koko Channel

About this user

Koko is a 38-year old western lowland gorilla who was raised by Dr. Penny Patterson, from the time she was 1 year old.

When Penny, then a young graduate student in psychology at Stanford, first saw a tiny, undernourished baby gorilla named Hanabi-Ko at the San Francisco Zoo, she had little inkling that the sickly ape would become her constant companion - and the subject of the longest continuous experiment ever undertaken to teach language to another species.

Wiithin a year, Project Koko was underway, and in two weeks the gorilla was using correct signed gestures for food, drink, and more. Today, more than 35 years later, Koko - the world's most renowned gorilla - is drawing on a vocabulary of more than 1,000 words, and understands more than 2,000 words of spoken English.

The most significant thing about these facts, is that Koko is not unique: Koko's former male companion, Michael, also became fluent in sign language (and art), and her current companion, Ndume, has picked up signs and spoken English without ever being taught. We have discovered that gorillas are more like us than we could have ever imagined!

Koko has become "the" ambassador for her critically endangered species, and the Foundation is building a new preserve on Maui, Hawaii, to ensure the future of great apes and interspecies communication, in perpetuity.