Koko was born on July 4, 1971, at the San Francisco Zoo to her biological mother Jacqueline and father Bwana. She was the 50th gorilla born in captivity and one of the first gorillas accepted by her mother in captivity. At age 19, Koko was reported to pass the mirror test of self-recognition, which most other gorillas fail.
About Koko (gorilla) in brief
Koko was born on July 4, 1971, at the San Francisco Zoo to her biological mother Jacqueline and father Bwana. Koko’s training began at the age of 1 and she had a working vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs, which she was able to combine in complex ways. She was the 50th gorilla born in captivity and one of the first gorillas accepted by her mother in captivity. At age 19, Koko was reported to pass the mirror test of self-recognition, which most other gorillas fail. She had been reported to use meta-language, being able to use language reflexively to speak about language itself, signing ‘good sign’ to another gorilla who successfully used signing. Some experts, including Mary Lee Jensvold, claim that Koko uses language the same way people do. In 1978 Koko gained worldwide attention as she was pictured on the cover of National Geographic magazine with a picture of her taking her own picture in the mirror. In 1985, she was later featured in National Geographic with a photo of her and her kitten, All Ball.
At the preserve, she met and interacted with a variety of celebrities including Robin Williams, Fred Rogers, Betty White, William Shatner, Flea, Leonardo DiCaprio, Peter Gabriel, and Sting. The name ‘Hanabiko’ is of Japanese origin and is a reference to her date of birth, the Fourth of July. The Gorilla Foundation’s preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains is home to Koko and a number of other endangered gorillas. It is not known if Koko has been able to communicate with humans in the past. She is believed to be the only gorilla in the world to have mastered the use of sign language and to have been trained to do so by Francine Patterson and Charles Pasternak. She has been the subject of numerous books and scientific articles about sign language, as well as a book about her life and learning process. She also appeared in the popular press in the 1980s and 1990s.
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This page is based on the article Koko (gorilla) published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
