C. Janelle's Reviews > Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me About Who We Are

Holy moly. This book is awesome.

I can't remember how we found this book. I think some website (maybe Goodreads) recommended it because my nine-year-old was reading every single thing Jane Goodall wrote. My daughter read it first, and then as she was getting ready to return it to the library said, "Mom, I really think you should read this book. It's really good."

Once I started the book, it didn't take me long to agree with her.

I was probably already primed to find this book amazing. Whenever I go to a zoo or an animal sanctuary, I always have mixed feelings, especially when I see the captive primates, whether they're gorillas, chimpanzees, golden lion tamarins, capuchin monkeys, or marmosets. I was reminded of this when my family visited the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., last month and observed the gorillas. I recognize the realities of habitat loss and other aspects of modern life that make it impossible to return many of these beings to the wild, but they're just a little too close for comfort. I empathize with them a little too much to make watching them in captivity completely comfortable.

Reading Fouts' book emphasized all of these feelings I was already having. It was a very emotional read.

In this book, Fouts (with Stephen Tukel Mills) addresses issues of language acquisition, how learning happens (especially the use of rewards and punishments in learning), the close evolutionary relationship between chimpanzees and humans, the bias of the speaking/hearing population for spoken language, the morality of using non-human animals for biomedical testing, and the arbitrary boundaries we use to define "human" and "non-human." While imparting all of this information, the book reads like a memoir---a very compelling memoir.

Near the end, I started asking "where are they now?" about the chimpanzees in the book, which Fouts wrote in 1997. After an internet search, I learned that Dar, Moja, and Washoe have since died, and that Tatu and Loulis are now living at Fauna Foundation in Quebec, only a few hours' drive from where we live now. My daughter and I are now looking at the adopt-a-chimp and membership options at the foundation, and wondering if we can swing a visit.

I also began reviewing all of my household purchases. I lean towards products not tested on animals anyway, but sometimes---I admit---I am swayed by a good price. There are a surprising number of products in my house that wouldn't make the cut if I were really serious about avoiding products tested on animals.

So basically, this was a compelling and poignant read that has compelled me to make some changes in my everyday life. I'm now thinking of buying this for a half-dozen people for Christmas. Although since they're all primates, maybe they'd appreciate dress-up clothes and a bouquet of bananas more.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Once triggered, learning will not stop---unless it is hijacked by conditioning." (83)

"Creativity and learning are examples of innate behavior that can only be hindered, not helped, by rewards." (84)

Of a baby chimpanzee: "Until she grasps her groups' specific gestures and social cues---its dialect---she won't be able to learn important skills from her mother, form alliances with her peers, attract a mate, and raise her own children." (87)

"If our ape ancestors communicated gesturally, were early man's first languages signed? If so, how and when did these signed languages become spoken?" (90)

"In fact, during the first half of this [the twentieth] century, educators tried mightily to eradicate American Sign Language because they thought its gestures were too monkeylike"; speech was seen as the 'higher and finer part' of language." (96)

"Science that dissociates itself from the pain of others soon becomes monstrous." (372)

"Some scientists love to measure an animal's mind by comparing it to the human I.Q. In these tests chimpanzees come off like mentally disabled children or adults. But when we are dropped in the jungle, we suddenly test like mentally disabled chimpanzees, and the chimpanzees look like certified geniuses." (376)