In the 1930s, the American psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellog, specializing in the area of conditioning, behavior and learning, decided to raise his son Donald with a seven-month-old chimpanzee calf named Gua. So that introduced the chimpanzee into his family, as a member, and tried to raise them as if they were brothers.
Its objective was to study the similarities and differences in the development of both individuals when they are treated in the same way, scientifically compare the evolution of the two children.
His son Donald then had ten months, and the results were surprising. The chimpanzee learned before the baby to eat with a spoon and to stop wetting diapers.
It was immediately shown that the chimpanzee was able to make a large number of human patterns their own, but Gua's development was much faster in terms of locomotive skills, since humans need more time to mature, which represents a learning advantage.
The chimpanzee was also able to answer up to a total of 95 phrases like "kiss Donald", or "show me the nose". And what about the child?
The "achievements" were not so obvious in the case of DonaldAt least not as to what we are used to in the habitual development of a child his age.
And the boy began to imitate Gua, so that four months after living with his new brother, he emitted grunts to indicate that he was hungry, licked the remains of food from the ground and nibbled at the shoes. Chimpanzee behavior patterns were very well assumed by Donald.
A year and a half, an age when most children say at least half a hundred words, Donald only knew six, and communicated with the sounds of the chimpanzee he had learned.
To the think that the child was in the process of animalization, Kellogg stopped the experiment. We do not know what would have happened if the chimpanzee had accompanied the baby from birth, or if the process had lengthened, the truth is that I find impressive the ability to imitate between the child and the baby.
When a baby grows up with a dog or a cat, this "developmental delay" does not occur because they are, are, very different species, and also do not breed the same. But if the baby grows up with a "hairy little brother" who looks so much like us, it is logical that he mimics his behaviors.
"Wild children" do not learn to speak and develop "human" behaviors because they lack the social environment among their peers, but we see how only the influence of an animal can animalize us in some way, at such a sensitive and receptive stage of development. of the child.
Winthrop N. Kellogg studies raising a chimpanzee with his babyé were reflected in the book "The ape and the child". "The Mind of an Ape" by David Premack, compiles several similar experiments.
