Project Nim Page #3

This was a fairly tale.

It was a 28-acre estate

surrounded by lovely gardens.

And that allowed me

to put up Nim's teachers

in magnificent surroundings

and not pay any rent.

Life was good.

Nim got out of the car,

ran up to the front door,

rolled down the hill, and he was gone.

He was free.

So, there was no reaction

at having taken him

out of Stephanie's house.

He was fine. And it was like

he had been there his whole life.

He certainly was a different

chimpanzee in this mansion

than he was with Stephanie.

So, I sort of got into more,

you know, interacting with him.

Herb's power as a professor,

his age,

completely impacted me.

He was my model.

We really clicked together.

I wanted so much

to be a part of his world.

I wanted to be

in that world of academia.

I had strong personal

feelings about Laura,

but I don't think that in any way

got in the way of our science.

Some of the daily bodily

requirements that Nim had

had to be addressed, and very quickly.

I eventually couldn't handle

the diapers any more.

He was getting bigger

and he was eating more of our food,

so pragmatically I had to

get him off those diapers.

I watched his facial expressions

when he needed the potty

and I began to see it and grab him

and bring him to the potty.

He did actually use

the toilet correctly,

but it was certainly not as reliable

as what you'd see in a child.

The idea was

that I would live with Nim

and I would train him for

a certain period of time in the house,

but then I would bring him in

every day to Columbia University.

This was an experiment

to teach or see

if a chimpanzee can learn sign language.

I just thought it was really

intellectually interesting.

Interesting to understand

how much chimpanzees are like us

and how much they're not.

At that time he was terribly cute

and getting little photos

in New York magazine.

There was a daily lesson plan,

if you will.

We were supposed to teach

these particular signs to Nim

and they were supposed to

also teach him everyday activities.

Dress yourself, undress yourself,

this sort of thing.

Like children

after they learn a few words,

Nim has spontaneously

put signs together.

In many instances we allow Nim

to use his own signs,

that he almost invents,

so long as they're consistent.

For example, this is the sign for "play"

that he invented.

He's learning signs rapidly.

They're going up, up, up, up, up.

The project was

literally humming.

You know, everything was

going very smoothly.

I have a chimpanzee

who was making history.

We did get a grant

somewhere in that time.

The project had

begun to enter the media,

so there was all this excitement

and hype about the project.

We were thrilled.

We've probably all seen

performing chimpanzees

on television or in circuses,

but Nim is no ordinary chimp.

Since he was a few weeks old,

Nim has lived in a close association

with a group of scientists

under the direction of

Dr Herbert Terrace

of Columbia University.

They're performing a unique experiment

to try to determine whether apes can be

taught to communicate with humans

using language.

How big will he be when he's full-grown?

Oh, he's going to be big.

He's going to be about 5 feet tall,

perhaps 150 pounds,

and supposedly five to six times

the strength of a man.

How are you going to be able

to handle him then?

He had grown.

I guess he was probably

something like that.

If you had to hold him,

you really had to hold him.

And he'd gone from being

this meek little huggable toy

to quite a robust young chimpanzee.

His eye teeth were never taken out,

which means that he's got fangs,

essentially, sitting here.

Extremely strong jaw.

If you didn't assert dominance

in some fashion,

you were going to be

in trouble eventually.

He could size somebody up

in two seconds.

Whether they were confident

or secretly unconfident.

If I stood up too quickly,

if I accidentally showed him

my back too quickly,

if I had food and I didn't think

to share it with him,

he'd cross that threshold

and go into attack.

You could tell

that he was getting an attitude.

The hair would go up on his arms

and he'd sort of get this look

in his face.

When he would bark,

I'd feel it inside,

the danger.

He had to lunge.

The contact, the rip,

the tear and the release.

And he had to draw blood.

She did not tell me that

in an alarming manner.

She was just reporting it.

Maybe I was just too

looking ahead with blinkers

and not wanting to hear that.

This is 37 stitches.

I had four here,

nine here. This one

sent me into the hospital.

This one actually was the most dangerous

one because he hit a tendon.

It's a lot of work

to take care of an animal

that's not your species

who has that kind of energy level.

I probably didn't know the difference

between chimpanzees and monkeys.

So, I was as blind and as ignorant

and as nave as probably they came.

I was on a quick learning curve.

I have high energy

and enthusiasm for a goal.

And he was my goal, apparently.

joyce was a great teacher.

She signed, she was completely

dedicated and motivated.

She wanted to do this.

This was fantastic!

He bit me really hard, and I

bit him on the ear right then and there,

and I said, "That's over. You will

never bite me again. "And he never did.

He did like a lot of human body contact.

Typically, when we would

leave the property,

he would be really attached to you.

The world would scare him,

so he would always come close.

Bill and I hung tight with Nim.

We sort of hit it off

on a lot of our different thinking.

She and I got together as a couple.

It helped

that we liked each other.

And I think that that helped Nim's life

because we enjoyed each other's company,

so we would do things together

and we would hang out as kind of a unit.

Oh, he loved the cats.

He was really, really tender

with the cat, and he'd hold it,

and he sort of liked the feel,

the touch. Something about it.

He would hold her and be like...

And you could see him, like, shaking

because he'd be so excited

that he had her.

He actually kind of

pushed her down on the ground

and then curled around her,

and just laid there, like,

"I'm in heaven. "

I would say

that it was fairly clear

that there was something more

going on than the project,

at least from his side.

And I think we all felt it

and we kind of had...

I don't want to say resentment,

but it was like,

"Oh, jeez, would he stop

this Laura thing?"

If someone showed me some attention,

I thought it meant

that they cared for me.

He had power.

I'm sure that, you know,

unconsciously I took advantage of that.

Somebody admires you,

um, why not...

So, yeah, we very briefly got involved

and he very, very briefly and abruptly

got out of it.

The entanglement completely

affected my decision to leave.

It's the humans I wanted to leave,

not the chimp.

Herb didn't want it to happen.

He went into a very enthusiastic mode

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