28/01/2025
When Robin Williams managed to make a gorilla laugh again after he had been mourning the death of his friend for six months.
Some American ethologists had taught a gorilla named Koko to speak to humans, through sign language.
Koko was extremely intelligent, but was going through a very difficult time, so much so that biologists feared he had begun to suffer from a serious form of melancholy.
The researchers wanted to help Koko, finding him a new friend, and at the same time they wanted to study how he interacted with humans.
In fact, having studied sign language and being able to communicate with our species, compared to other gorillas, Koko was the perfect specimen to establish whether there were real cognitive boundaries between our species or not.
They then asked Robin Williams, known mainly for being a great comedian, if he wanted to spend a few hours in the company of Koko, trying to interact with him naturally, as if he were a normal person in need of help.
Williams immediately accepted, even if he had doubts about the manner of the meeting. He was not an expert on primates and feared he would be too awkward to interact peacefully with the animal.
However, when he arrived in front of the gorilla, Williams had a real epiphany.
By allowing the animal to get to know him on its own, Williams realized that interacting with Koko was as if he were interacting with a very curious child. Little by little, the gorilla became more and more interested in the visitor, so much so that he was fascinated by his pair of glasses and wanted to see him with "his strange eyes made of glass".
Koko soon began to talk to Williams, using sign language, suggesting they play or asking him surprisingly intelligent questions, which shocked the actor. The two, in a few minutes, even began to joke, tickle each other, play and tell some of their life experiences.
This deeply surprised the researchers, who asked Koko to define the actor with a chosen word. The term that the gorilla used was "friend".
Williams himself was positively disturbed by that meeting, especially when he learned that he had managed to make a gorilla laugh who was at risk of falling into depression due to loneliness.
Following this, he then decided to visit Koko whenever he could and to shoot commercials with him, in favor of the conservation of protected species and against animal experimentation.
The bond that was created between Koko and the American actor was so deep that he survived Williams' death, which occurred in 2014. In fact, when the old gorilla learned of his friend's death, he signaled to his instructors if he could cry and remained thoughtful for a few days, his lips trembling in mourning.
Koko was inconsolable in knowing that he would never see him again.
Koko died 4 years later, in 2018, at the age of 46. Today he is remembered as one of the most important primates in the history of scientific research....
Credit - Daily Factfinder
