 It is the 19th of November 1973 and a chimpanzee is being born. Two weeks later, the male chimp will be removed from his mother and thrust into the human world. The reason? To raise a chimp in a human family, in order to see if he would be able to try and communicate using sign language. Today's story carries on the tradition of scientists trying to make humans out of apes. Sadly for the chimp, the story ends in alienation from his surrogate family as well as his own species. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. Today's subject is a story of Project Nim Chimpsky. Our story may sound familiar, any kind of ease, as we all know about another chimpanzee baby experiment, which was very controversial for the time, which was the Donald and Gaya study. Well today's story is a continuation of several human-raised chimp studies since the Donald and Gaya situation. Can you re-believe that that video is nearly two years old? Now this video will draw its facts and figures from Can an Ape Creator Sentence by H.S. Terrace et al. as well as some other bits and pieces, including the book The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Lisbeth Ness, which as always the link is will be in the description below. So before Nim we have to talk about the person behind the experiment. This is Herbert S. Terrace. Born in Brooklyn on the 29th of November 1936, the future Project Nim organiser would study in late 1950s at Cornell University, gaining a degree in psychology in 1957 and a master's in experimental psychology in 1958. He would then go on to Harvard University post-graduation, studying under a name that has popped up a few times on his channel, B.F. Skinner aka The Pigeon Bomb Guy. Skinner was very much deep into behaviouralism and this would influence Terrace. Needless to say, working under Skinner, Terrace would gain experience in working with animals, although this came in the form of pigeons. This was his paper discrimination learning with and without errors of 1963, in which was his doctorate dissertation. Now our story will take a path towards Nim and the Chimp experiment, when B.F. Skinner received a savage review of his behaviouralist theory, published in 1957. The review which was published in 1959 by Noam Chomsky refuted Skinner's theory, that language is learned through trial and error and on the feedback of the parents of a child. Instead Chomsky posited that the ability to develop language is innate in humans, that has evolved in our brains over our development as a species over millions of years. Well this rebuttal needed to have its own rebuttal, as such an experiment was set up to show that through behaviouralism theory that a chimpanzee can learn to converse with humans. One of the people in the behaviouralist camp that wanted to disprove Chomsky's theory was of course the one and only Herbert Terrace. I mean it had to be him, otherwise that little chat about his career would have been a complete waste of time. Terrace considered that a chimpanzee was his best bet, I mean they are very closely related to us humans, but the chimp has a drawback. It doesn't have the vocal capabilities as of a human. As such Terrace looked towards a physical method of communication, and this would be sign language. So Terrace needed a chimpanzee, in order to get one he put his name down on the waiting list at the Institute of Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma. Whilst waiting he set out and planned his experiment, this was during the mid 1960s. Part of this would involve visiting other primate facilities, one was the Yerkes lab. A baby. Terrace's name getting to the top of the list would come on the 19th of November 1973, with the surprise birth of a baby boy chimp at the Institute for Primate Studies. The boy's mother interestingly was on the human birth control pill, which does actually work with chimpanzees. Apparently they were not at this time. As Caroline, the boy's mother, cradled the newborn, the mother baby bond would be broken just 10 days later for the beginnings of a chimpanzee language study. The baby chimp would from now on be raised as if he was a baby human. So what to name the newborn? Well they were trying to disprove Chomsky's theory. So how about Nim Chimpsky? And who said scientists don't have a sense of humor? So Nim was placed aboard a plane, and sent to his new family in the upper west side of New York. The surrogate family's matriarch was Stephanie Lafarge, an old student of Terrace, and reportedly an ex-lover. So the family were instructed to try and teach the newborn American sign language, as well as raise a chimp as if he was another human child. One small snag, no one in the Lafarge household was actually very fluent in ASL. Nevertheless, the family persevered with the study. Nim played with his young human siblings and travelled around on Stephanie. During this time, teachers would try and show Nim different sign language signs. Over the space of two years, the experiment diverged chaotically into Nim overpowering his family. You see, most human chimp studies had been undertaken with female chimps, because one, they are generally smaller, thus easy to handle, and two, they can be slightly less aggressive. By 1975, Nim's time with the Lafarges had become unhinged. He broke things around the house as the strong young chimp climbed and played. He bit his surrogate siblings and didn't really act like a human child. I mean, well, he wasn't, but the plan wasn't going well. Nature was certainly winning over nurture. So far, all he had known was human contact, and couldn't understand his power when playing. The experiment had broken down, and Teris had lost control over the study. Eventually, he would have to move Nim to a more controlled habitat, and this was the Riverdale mansion that Columbia University owned in the Bronx. Reportedly, by this time, he had learned a few signs. In order to be counted as learned, Teris set out in his criteria in his 1979 paper. Nim satisfied our criterion of acquiring a sign when, one, on different occasions, three independent observers reported its spontaneous occurrence, and two, it occurred spontaneously on each of five successive days. Nim was raised and taught more sign language at Columbia University by Teris' students. Under his next surrogate mum, 18-year-old Laura Ann Petito, a student of Teris, and also another lover of his. During his period, Nim was closely observed to see if he was able to string a sentence together, but it wasn't working out as planned. His behaviour was increasingly testing and would occasionally attack Petito. You see, reviewing Nim's utterances showed he was kind of randomly signing until he earned a treat. Kind of like brute-forcing a password, but in this case, it was for food. The only teachers and caregivers Nim would actually try to listen to and not attack were bizarrely the ones who would bite and hit him. Kind of in a way to overpower the young chimp. Clearly, the experiment was not being run in a particularly scientific way, with a study lead having or being or having had relationships with his underlings. Teris would disappoint the 20-year-old junior Laura Ann Petito by refusing to progress their affair. As such, Petito would leave the study. And the car crash would continue. Nim, increasingly frustrated, aggressive and still getting bigger and stronger, would continue to injure researchers. Eventually, Teris had become frustrated with the lack of language from Nim, and the ever-increasing injuries of his researchers meant he had to pull the plug. Now, this left one young chimp with no purpose. Life after Teris So, Nim was sent back to where he came from. That is, the Institute for Primate Studies. Technically, the whole time, Nim was still where property. He was thrust back into the world of the chimpanzee. He hadn't seen another one of his kind in the last four years. Lacking the required social skills, Nim became isolated and depressed. But we'll quickly pause Nim's story for a moment. What of Teris' study? Well, during the experiment, a large number of photographs, notes and footage was generated, leaving Teris a lot to review. He already had an idea that Nim's language was less than what he had hoped, and the evidence showed Teris that he had an even lesser grasp of ASL. In many cases, it seemed like the teachers were leading Nim, and Nim was just simply copying what they were saying in order to get that lovely treat. By experiment end, Nim was thought to have accumulated 125 signs, but it didn't appear to seem like he was combining signs that much to create new meanings. Some of Teris' underlings would actually say that Nim only really had close to 25 signs. Teris would conclude in his 1979 paper in Science magazine. Projects devoted to teaching chimpanzees and gorillas to use language have shown that these apes can learn vocabularies of visual symbols. There is no evidence, however, that apes can combine such symbols in order to create new meanings. The function of the symbols of an apes vocabulary appears to not so much to identify things or to convey information, as for example Skinner's concept of tax, as it is to satisfy a demand, but is use the symbol in order to obtain some sort of reward. Skinner's concept of mans. Now, Teris' almost 118 opinion and conclusions would put back animal language studies by years, and it wouldn't go down well with his peers. He would solidify his position further in his 2019 book Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can. So back to Nim. The primate centre was not known for being an enticing place to live. For a creature like Nim, it was like being in hell being caged. There was only one ray of light for Nim, in one employee at the institute for primate study called Bob Ingersoll. So Ingersoll would meet Nim on the chimp's first day returning to the centre, and interestingly, soon after he noticed Nim's sign. One sign was Stone Smoke Time, as said by Ingersoll himself. The chimp during his time in New York had actually been introduced to weed. The two would create a bond, including Ingersoll sharing joints with Nim, but he would have to move again. You see, the centre by the late 1970s was having financial difficulties, and the owner, Dr William Lemon, decided to sell off some of his chimpanzees. Nim was sold to the laboratory for experimental medicine and surgery in primates, which has the best abbreviation, Lemsib, managed by New York University. Thankfully, Nim was relocated away from the laboratory to a ranch in Texas with the help from Ingersoll. However, like most things in his life, this was a bittersweet turn of events. Yes, he was spared from the laboratory, but the ranch in Texas had no real knowledge on chimps, and for a social animal, it was tortured without any companions. In a few occasions, he would escape his enclosure, with one time resulting in Nim killing a dog. During his time there, he would attack other people. A companion was sourced, but sadly, she would die fairly early into her time at the ranch, and again, Nim would be sent into a depression. Another couple of companions were relocated to live with Nim. This last year is for around five years, until on the 10th of March 2000, Nim died from a heart attack. He was 26 years old. Nim's life was a sad one, and unfortunately for the scientific world, a negative one on animal language studies. It wasn't Nim's fault. It was a short-sightedness of the study he was in. So, Tarris is still alive, and would go on to earn several awards for his various studies and papers. Now, this week's video won't really fit into my bingo card or disaster scale. Instead, I'll use this cruel bar graph. This is a plain difficult production. For all videos on the channel, creative commas attribution share are like licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently wet and windy corner of southern London, UK. I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel, as well as Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it, so check them out for other odds and sods and bits and pieces I'm up to. And I'd like to have a very nice warm thank you to my YouTube and Patreon members who financially support this channel and help me pay for the research papers I have to download for videos like this. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching, and Mr Music, play us out please.