WEBVTT - SYSK Live: Koko, the Gorilla Who Talked 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.840 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.640 There's Charles W Chuck, Brian Jerry's not here, but all 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.640 of these beautiful people are at the Castro Theater at 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:34.360 San Francisco, California. Yeah. I love it. Very nice, very nice. 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.040 Got a Chucker sign out there. I think I know 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:43.640 who that is. It's pretty great. It's a good sign, 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:51.320 it is. Thanks mom. Oh, we're definitely not gosing. So uh, 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:57.520 we've asked you all here tonight to talk about being 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.720 a child of the Are this for us? Thank you 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:09.920 very much. Okay, let's just start over. I thought she 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:13.680 was like, I'm just gonna put my stuff up here. So, um, 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:16.679 if Chuck and I are children of the seventies and eighties, 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.280 he was born in the very very very early seventies. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.640 I was born in the mid seventies, and I mean 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:25.760 it might as well have been the sixties basically. I 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.240 mean you were right there on the cusp um and 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:32.479 being children of this era, we were aware of certain things, 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:36.080 like all kids of the seventies and eighties were um, 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:42.440 like that vans could have carpeting on the wall, you know, um, 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:47.440 every kid knew the precise amount of McDonald's orange drink 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.560 that he or she could drink just before getting a 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:56.280 crippling stomachache. That's like seventies eighties kid knowledge, um or 0:01:56.320 --> 0:02:00.560 that your parents um like to go to swinger parties 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:04.800 where there were keys and fish bowls and weird stuff 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:11.200 like that, and did your parents don't do that? And 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:15.160 every kid of the seventies and eighties knew that somewhere 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:18.480 out there there was a guerrilla named Coco who could talk. 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:22.799 And if you've never heard of Coco, prepared to buckle 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.600 up and have your mind blown, because that is what 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:30.560 we're talking about tonight. Coco. They're talking Grilla who is 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.519 a local here as I'm sure you guys know, this 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:38.560 is actually a super local show. It is, Yeah, because 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:43.000 Coco the Gorilla was born fourth of July, just like 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:48.520 Haraldo Rivera and Malia Obama and a bunch of other 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:50.560 people I haven't heard of when I looked it up online. 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.320 My dad was born on the fourth of July. Yes, 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:56.480 why didn't you say that the other night? I just 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:02.080 didn't feel like it all right, Tom Cruise was if 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:04.160 I'm not mistaken, I think that was the for the 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.959 movie he had that he had been born for that movie. 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:11.600 He's just so good my body. Yeah, you really sold it. Uh. 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.560 Coco was born in the fourth of July one, just 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.679 four months after yours truly was born. There would be 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.520 a lot of mirroring here between my development and Cocos. 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.840 Coco was born at the San Francisco Zoo. Yeah, six 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.679 point one miles from here. And what was Coco's birth 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.400 name in full, Hanna be Co. So Coco is actually 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.920 your nickname, and Hanna Biko in Japanese means fireworks child. 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:42.240 She was named that after the fireworks going off. You 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.720 think that's cute on the fourth of July. Just wait yeah, 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.120 if that's got you all in already, man, you guys 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:53.119 are gonna love this one. So Coco was a Western 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:57.080 Lowland gorilla, which was a and still is a critically 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:01.960 endangered subspecies of guerrilla in Central West Africa. And Coco 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.160 was born into a world in the nineties seventies here 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.119 in the United States, especially where people I thought two 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:12.240 things about guerrillas. They thought they were super scary because 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.040 literally because of King Kong, the movies kind of like 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:22.720 Jaws with sharks they two very huggable animals. Movies ruined 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:27.240 it basically, and they thought guerrillas were scary, and they 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:32.039 thought gorillas were really dumb, like duh um, dumb like 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.600 even among apes. I thought gorillas were dumb exactly um. 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:37.719 And so this is the world that Coco was born into. 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.360 And when she was born at the San Francisco Zoo um, 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.119 she had kind of a difficult infancy. Her mom wasn't 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.840 producing enough milk to sustain her, and then when she 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.520 was I think six months old, she caught dysentery. She 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.720 developed dysentery and was basically at death store and had 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.120 to be removed from her family unit so that she 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.560 could be nursed back to health by humans who took 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:00.840 care of her around the clock, which is right sure, 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:03.600 because they actually did save her life. But they had 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.400 a problem after she recovered, and that was that she 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:08.680 had spent so much time away from her family unit 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.279 and hanging out with humans instead that they were worried 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:13.479 that her family unit would reject her if they took 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.160 her back. So now they kind of had a problem 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.680 on their hands, and they had a gorilla, Yeah, the 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:26.200 gorilla in the room. So a great movie it's fantastic. 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.120 So there was a Stanford grad student around this time. 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:35.400 It's bad joke, Jerry cut that one out already, already. 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:37.360 I've only got three of those for the whole show, 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.360 so you guys keep score. There was a Stanford grad 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.800 student around this time that came on the scene, twenty 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:48.080 four year old young woman named Francine Penny Patterson. She 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.919 entered Coco's life at this moment when Coco needed her most, 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.080 and she said, you know what, I'm studying apes, and 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:59.719 I think that I can teach guerrillas how to speak 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.600 use sign language. You've got a guerrilla. I need my PhD. 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.919 This is all kind of perfect as that's a verbatim 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:11.960 quote from that moment. So she took control of Cocoa's 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.960 care and for the next fortysomething years. Uh, they had 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:19.640 a relationship that can really only be described as human 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:23.039 mother and guerilla daughter very much. So, yeah, for sure. 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:26.279 And so the whole point of trying to teach Cocoa 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.160 or any guerrilla sign language was um to find out 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.640 how or if a guerrilla could acquire language, and then 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.920 compare how a guerrilla acquires language to how kids human 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.800 kids acquire language. And then we can kind of compare 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.760 and contrast the differences and kind of trace back humans 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.160 evolutionary history for how we developed language, because it's still 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.320 a mystery. We don't really know why. We just know 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:52.280 we seem to be the only species capable of using language. Try. 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.719 Plus it's a good party trick, right, And it was 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.480 the seventies. Yeah, so at first, Cocoa and Penny we're 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:01.840 working to other at the San Francisco Zoo. But it's 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.359 a zoo and there were people that were, you know, 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:06.400 paying money to get in there and gawk at them. 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.400 A lot of slack jawn yokels like John Yokels at 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:16.800 the San Francisco Zoo and uh, look, yeah, what was 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.360 my favorite line? Never mind, I can't get off track 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:24.000 this early. We'll save the Simpsons for later. So, uh, 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.200 people were gawking and that's very distracting to a young gorilla. 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:29.520 So she said, you know what, this is going pretty well, 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:30.840 but I think I could do a lot better with 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.520 my research and for Cocoa's benefit, if we moved Cocoa 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.600 to Stanford. And they basically said, sure you can. Um, 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.040 you can take Cocoa on loan and go do some 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.640 serious research at Stanford University right right where there's a 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.480 lot more dope to be smoked. San Francisco zoo, you 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:49.239 know what I mean. I'm sure we've got some Stanford 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:53.000 grads here, so uh yeah, oh really really that's surprising. 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:58.320 Go cardinals. I thought it was giant trees, is there? Yeah, 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:01.440 it was a little clunky, so okay, um so uh 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:06.840 so they moved to Stanford officially launched Project Coco, and 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.840 Coco suddenly is surrounded by a bunch of interesting people 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:15.040 who are giving her their undivided attention. And she's raised 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:16.680 in kind of this way that's similar to how you 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.680 would raise a human child, like an ideal homeschool sitting, 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:24.040 where like everything is about her and teaching her stuff 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.840 and playing with her and keeping her attention going. And 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.080 she really started to kind of thrive in this this environment, 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:32.760 and she started to pick up sign language pretty quick. 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.440 In her first two weeks of being taught sign an 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:41.839 adapted form of American sign language, she knew food, drink, 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.360 and more. And really the last one is the most 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.120 important one. But she picked up these signs within two weeks. 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:50.400 And again, remember bear this in mind this whole time. 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.400 Anytime we say something amazing about Coco. Imagine that at 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.360 the time when she's doing this stuff, She's the first 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.440 gorilla doing this stuff and just amazing seen the world 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:04.719 because we thought grillas were scary, stupid, just bury the 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.720 mind stunned. Silence. Was not what I was going for, 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:12.240 but I'll take it. I'll take it whatever I can 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:17.240 get from you guys. So things were going well at Stanford, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:18.840 but she said, you know what, this is great, but 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:20.600 I think we even need more space than they have 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.960 at Stanford for a gorilla. And so she founded the 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:27.600 Guerilla Foundation and move Cocoa and Project Cocoa to a 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:32.840 six acre private facility that uh basically had a mobile 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:34.959 home for Coco to live in, and that's where Coco 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.800 lived her life. They retrofitted it so, you know, they 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:39.199 had to make the walls a little stronger. Over the 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.920 years is Cocoa grew and they made it so a 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.400 gorilla could live in this trailer and she loved it 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.200 was her house. She made her little nest out of 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:49.679 blankets every night, and had a tire to sit in, 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.360 and had like all sorts of toys to play and 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.320 TV to watch a lot more than I had for sure, 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:58.320 although you did have to make a nest of blankets 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:01.600 every night in your house, it's true. Or had you 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:03.720 let that man touch your beard, that would have been 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:11.079 your future. I think that's true. Coco was learning faster 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.360 than I was anyways. Yeah, but you had that innate 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.520 like don't let them do it. Don't let them do it. 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.800 So uh. Coco was taught sign language using a couple 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.520 of different techniques. There's one called the molding technique. But 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:27.240 they would literally take Coco's hand and shape her hand 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.080 in the shape of the sign and do the sign 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:31.760 while they're either saying the word or showing a picture 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:35.000 of the object or whatever or both. Um. I know 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.160 you have an example that you're pretty good at. Do 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:40.480 the cat. The sign for cat is where you like 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:44.160 kind of demonstrate whiskers. You draw whiskers across your face. 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:48.040 So you would take you take Coco's hand and squish 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.320 these together, ship these two right there you go, and 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:58.200 then just be like cat cat You're like the guy 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:02.040 in the sky lounge all of a sudden, right, so creepy. 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.160 But that was so that was the molding technique. The 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.720 other one, invitation, is way simpler. It's just you know, 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:13.840 you would show her cat, cat cat, and she would 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:20.800 eventually be like, and you go, yes, cat cat cat. 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:29.960 Stop God, so annoying. That's what Coco would have said 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:34.840 to I got it, I got it, Okay Stop. So 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.320 within the Coco's first four and a half year she 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.560 went through a couple of big language growth spurts. She 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.960 added about two hundred new words to her vocabulary each year, 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.679 again way faster than I was uh. And she was 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:52.880 developing language basically at about the rate of um a 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:57.160 child eight months behind. Cocoa a human child, right, but 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.760 she was acquiring signs at about the same rate as 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.160 a deaf child her age, which is pretty astounding, especially 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:06.520 considering she wasn't taught sign language until she was one, 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:08.800 and she wasn't exposed to English until she was about 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.840 six months old, so she kind of started from behind 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:14.880 and started as a gorilla. But she was still picking 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:18.640 up language at about the same pace as human children. 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.840 And this is just knocking everybody's socks off. It's amazing. 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.120 So Coco, I think, had a working vocabulary by the 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.400 time she was an adult of about six hundred signs 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.000 and then spontaneously used another four hundred, so that's a 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.400 thousand signs and then could apparently understand about two hundred 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:39.920 I'm sorry, two thousand words of English, right, so she 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.560 could understand two thousand words, she could sign about a thousand. 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.760 And in the middle of sort of this early period 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:49.360 is where Penny Patterson became doctor Penny Patterson. Yeah, she 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.480 got her pH d from Stanford and I think seventy 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:57.240 nine or something like that, and Project Coco continued, right, um, 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.320 And one of the things that Coco taught the world 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.680 is that not only could she understand sign language and 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.720 use signs, she could actually use this to do things 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.400 that we thought only humans could do, like joke around. 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.200 Like there's this really good example of her making a joke. 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.119 It's a gorilla level joke, but it's a joke. Nonetheless, 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:18.319 it's still qualifies you want to just sort of a 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:22.240 Josh and Chuck level joke. So they would go in 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:24.880 with a white towel and try and get Cocoa to 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:29.360 sign white, and Cocoa kept signing red, red, red, and 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:37.599 they were like, no, Cocoa, what color is the towel? Red? Red, red? No, Cocoa, 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.160 what color is a towel? I'm just kidding. They were 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:45.120 very kind, and Coco eventually went over and picked a 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:48.120 red piece of lent off the towel and held it 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:52.240 up and said red, red, red, and laughed and laughed 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.080 and laughed, and everyone just it was pretty much the 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:58.680 best joke of all time. Well, it definitely qualifies as 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.200 a joke. We did not know that gorillas were capable 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:05.840 of joking. She also knew how to lie. That's actually 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:09.240 kind of sophisticated. As wrong as it is, it's kind 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.600 of sophisticated intellectually. We didn't realize gorilla not gonna make 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:18.319 any true at all about the human sophistication it takes 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.360 to lie. It just kind of instantly it rights itself. 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:23.880 All right, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:28.000 get political. So there was there was a time when 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.520 Coco broke the kitchen sink in her in her little kitchen, 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.400 and later on Penny asked her what happened, and Coco said, 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:39.760 Kate did it, which is the first lie children tell, 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:44.200 literally is Kate didn't. Yeah, Kate, it's always right. But 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:48.040 she like threw her caregiver under the bus, which is 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.920 very human if you think about it, you know, she 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:56.600 was like Kate did it, you should fire her. She 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.480 was also pretty good at making an improv basically and 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:01.440 making up signs for things that she didn't know the 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.840 signs for. For instance, a mask was an eye hat. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.720 It's not bad, it's fairly cute. A zebra she called 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.040 a white tiger because she didn't know the sign for zebra. 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.520 Not bad. Why they're gonna lose their minds when you 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:21.400 know what enters the picture. A ring was a finger bracelet. 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:29.560 That's pretty good. And a Pinocchio doll was an elephant. Baby, 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:35.160 this is a gorilla. Everybody, not bad, not bad at all. 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:40.960 She also had are you asking me literally? If you 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.000 should say that? I think you should? Don't you tell 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:49.520 everyone about Coco's insults? So so prepared to aweso more. Um. 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:52.840 She had her own little vocabulary of insults like bird 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.280 and nut like you're a bird, you're a nut. That 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:59.560 was their insults. Um it got even better, rotten stink. 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:03.320 It's also a good punk band name, it is pretty good, 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:22.520 dirty toilet, toilet, dirty devil, and um face mother, that 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:28.960 was that was the one. I'm sorry, I apologize before. 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:36.320 I'll just apologize now as well. That's gonna sound so 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:40.280 sweet beeped out. When we end up releasing this episode, 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:50.640 please come back. I said, I was sorry, and I 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:52.560 love in the middle of it. You look over at 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.080 me and point to f F f F and you go, 0:16:57.040 --> 0:16:59.040 I want I wanted you to be on the hook 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:02.600 as well as me. All Right, that's it. That's all 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.080 the dirty language it was. It was worth it. That's 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:10.240 a good quality joke you get because see Coco didn't 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:19.040 really say that. That was Josh. So here's the deal though. 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.720 We we talked so far about Coco insulting people and 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.439 making jokes and throwing people under the bus, but that 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.199 was not Coco's nature. Coca was actually very sweet gorilla. 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:34.640 And everyone who came into Coco, especially Dr Patterson, loved, loved, 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:38.800 loved this gorilla. Yes, um, And so in nineteen six, 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.920 this Guerrilla Foundation expanded, the little family grew a little 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:44.959 bigger when they brought in a guerrilla male named Michael, 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.439 and um, Michael was weird. It's a weird name for 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:51.080 a gorilla. It's kind of like have you ever seen 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.160 somebody where you meet someone's dog and they're like, this 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.840 is James or Alan or something like that. Like you 0:17:57.880 --> 0:17:59.920 can use a human name for a dog, but it's 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.040 got to be just slightly off. I'm trying to think 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.600 or for a name you could give a dog. Alan 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:14.920 is pretty close, Edwards, Larry is pretty good Larry. But no, 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.560 if it was like a big sloppy bulldog named Larry, 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:21.160 you'd be like, of course, Larry. James, though, who would 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.919 name a dog James? For Jennifer is a pretty good 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:30.399 name for a dog, right, Yeah, Nah, Chuck's that's a 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.119 good dog name too. She Chuck is on the cusp 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:37.560 of being goofy. Anyway, all right, that's another everybody shouting 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:42.320 at the stage. We didn't ask for this anyway. Michael 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.720 comes into the picture, Michael the gorilla, and he also 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.040 learned American sign language too, and he picked it up 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.600 pretty well. Not quite as as well as Cocoa, but 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:54.600 still very well. Um. He was also enculturated, which means 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:57.800 that he was raised basically as a human um and 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.240 and not as a gorilla, which means that you like 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:05.080 to listen to Pavarotti and paint very seriously. They both painted, actually, 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.679 but Michael took it very seriously. But one of the 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:12.080 big findings from Project Coco is that they found that 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:15.920 Michael and Coco would sign to one another unprompted. They 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.680 would just communicate through sign and that each one taught 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:21.520 the other signs that the humans hadn't taught them. Right, 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.280 So Michael learned some stuff from humans that Coco hadn't 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:26.560 and he went and talked Coco and vice versa, which 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.000 is pretty big. Yeah, it's big. It's cute and a 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:35.399 little creepy, especially if they developed their own sign language. 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:39.840 It's pretty good. You got the chloroform. We should also 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:42.080 mention there was there's if you've seen the documentary, there's 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.080 one on Netflix called Coco. I think the gorilla who 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:47.160 could Talk. It might be that on the nose. There's 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.200 a colon in there somewhere. Yeah, from the BBC uh. 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.040 And there's a man in that documentary you see a lot. 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.600 His name is Ron Cone. He came on the projects 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.200 very early on to document all this via camera and videotape, 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:00.919 and it stuck around through the whole project because he 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:05.639 was clearly in love with Benny Patterson. That was the 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.040 whole subtext of that documentary the whole time. I was 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.000 like even says, at the very beginning, he was like fault. 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:12.960 She was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.760 my life. Yeah, I was like, oh, I really feel 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.879 bad for the feel bad for m. That's an extra 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:21.840 kind of like a subplot to the document. Totally was. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:24.119 But Ron wasn't a gorilla, so he had no shot. 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.760 He would even dress up like one sometimes and I 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:32.679 just didn't work. So the word got around, as it 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:37.760 does in around Woodside, California, where this gorilla foundation was, 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:44.120 that there was a gorilla in their midst Its terrible, 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.000 all right, I would ask all of you not to 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:53.640 encourage him. And by the way, this is just neither 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.040 here nor there. But today where Coco lived is just 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:58.240 a two minute drive from a Ross dress for less. 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.520 This is one of Asha's when you when Josh puts 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.680 together these uh these things, you get these interesting little 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:08.480 factoids like that it's like two minutes away. There's a 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.040 couple of them in every single one. Like other people 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.400 who are sitting there like smelling soap, like realized that 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:18.119 two minutes away there's a guerrilla foundation where there's sign 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:22.960 language using guerrillas. Probably not, I don't think so, probably not. Uh. 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.960 And by nineteen seventy eight, the world was introduced to 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:30.240 Coco in a big way when Coco made her first 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:33.439 appearance of what would be Too on the cover of 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:37.240 National Geographic magazine. Uh. And if you've seen this very 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:40.760 famous photo, what you see is as a gorilla holding 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.520 a camera and you think, oh, that's cute, and when 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.359 you look closely, you realize that the Olympus camera is 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:50.359 backwards and Coco had taken her own picture in a 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.760 mirror and was the photographer of note for National Geographics 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.640 and it's like, it's a well framed photograph, she's using 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.240 it correctly, and yeah, it ended up on the cover 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:06.600 the first Yeah, sure, sure, I was trying to avoid 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:09.480 using that word, but yes, that's what it was. The 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:12.680 second cover though, so that introduced the world to to Cocoa. 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:15.720 Inside there was like a pretty substantial article written by 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:19.000 Penny basically describing Project Coco and how it was going, 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:23.600 and everybody's like, wow, this is amazing. But in seven 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:26.440 years later she was on the cover again, and this 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:29.560 time the world just fell in love with Coco because 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:33.679 in the cover photo, uh, Coco is cradling her kitten. 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:38.679 Her kitten, not a kitten, Coco's kitten, because Coco had 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:41.560 a kitten, and that is what this whole this whole 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:45.960 issue was about Yeah, it was, it's super cute. I mean, 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.280 I think we can all agree that inner specs mingling 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:50.000 is kind of like the best thing on the internet. 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:53.760 I could look at that stuff all day. I do 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:58.600 sometimes imily. I just sit around and it's like, there's 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:02.240 a parrot with an alligator that adorable. They love each other. 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:07.840 They looked, you can't do it with reptiles. No, not easily, 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:11.919 never cute. I have seen some cute reptile stuff, but 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:14.600 it's few and far between. Like a snake cuddling a turtle. 0:23:14.760 --> 0:23:19.800 That's no cuddle. Oh, sorry to break it to you. 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:23.040 I got to rethink this stuff I look at on 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:26.320 the internet. So Coco, uh, maybe because Coco had been 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:31.720 taught the word cat um incessantly cat loved I love 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:35.720 cats and wanted to kitten, and for for one I 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:37.520 think it was birthday or Christmas one year, they gave 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:41.800 Coco a very realistic stuffy kitten and that that didn't 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:46.000 work because Coco's no dummy, and they're like, all right, 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:47.720 I guess we gotta go for it and do the 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:50.280 real thing. So they brought in a litter of kittens 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:54.119 and had Coco pick one out. Um, she smashed all 0:23:54.160 --> 0:24:04.160 but one, and that was the lefty kittens. True not true. 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:08.959 Now she picked out a little uh, a little tabby Manx. 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:13.359 Manxes don't have or Manx, I don't have tails. My 0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:17.400 brother's got a Manx of course because he's my brother. Uh, 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:19.600 And so Manx didn't have a tail. And so Coco 0:24:19.920 --> 0:24:22.879 named this little ball of fluff all Ball, and then 0:24:23.000 --> 0:24:26.200 cut That was the name of Coco's kitten. And all 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:30.600 Ball himself was a pretty interesting cat. Um. He had 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:34.080 been abandoned. His whole litter had been by his mother, 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:36.879 and so he was nursed by a dog for like 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:39.480 four and a half weeks. Not only just a dog, 0:24:39.520 --> 0:24:41.959 a Karen Terrier, which is the same breed as Toto 0:24:42.520 --> 0:24:45.439 from the Wizard of Oz. And then he wanted to 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:52.520 become the pet cat of a talking gorilla. What is 0:24:52.560 --> 0:25:03.200 going on? Trigger warning everybody. All Ball died, All Ball 0:25:03.240 --> 0:25:06.480 got out, I was hit by car and killed. I know, 0:25:06.800 --> 0:25:09.800 I'm sorry to have to tell you that, but that's 0:25:09.840 --> 0:25:12.720 what happened. All Ball got out, got smashed to buy 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:18.960 a car, and Penny told Cocoa this, We didn't hit 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:22.360