Free Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

to understand the differences in behavior and development of these group-reared infants and their human-reared counterparts. The differences were remarkable, but “intelligence,” I was soon to learn, is probably the most elusive and detrimental concept prevalent in the conceptual toolkit of modern psychology.
    When I first met Lucy she seemed to be more attentive to social interactions with humans and to give crisper signs than the apes in the institute’s colony. When Roger introduced me, Lucy retrieved a plastic flower from her box of playthings and offered it to me, just as human children of one or two years do. Object offering passes through a preliminary stage in human children in which the object is first offered and then withdrawn before it is actually taken by the other party. A few months later, the child clearly seeks to transfer objects from his or her possession to that of another.
    When I reached out to accept the plastic flower from Lucy, thinking how nice it was of her to offer, she deftly sank her teeth into the back of my hand. Chimpanzee offers, it seemed, were not quite like human offers. I was only later to realize that rather than attempting to give me the flower, Lucy was daring me to take it, albeit in a rather deceptive manner. I would fall for that trick again many times in my ape career, as chimpanzees are of sufficient intelligence to disguise the trick in many ways.
    Why should Lucy want to bite me? Obviously I had not tried to bite or hurt her in any way. I just wanted to learn about her. Little did I understand how my presumption in entering her home with no proper greeting or explanation of my mission had been rude from her perspective. Nor did I realize that extending the object without the appropriate facial expressions and vocalizations was a way of determining how well I could judge her intentions. It reminded me of going into othercultures, or even distinct subcultures in the United States, where attempts are made to size up what you know by seeing if you fall for the oldest trick in the book. I flunked the test.
    Despite the tenor of our introduction, Lucy and I went on to develop a good relationship. That was because Roger advised me that the best way to make friends with chimps was simply to spend time alone with them. Lucy at the time weighed about seventy pounds and was rather intimidating. I wasn’t quite sure what she might do to me when we were alone, as pound for pound, apes are five times as strong as a human male in excellent physical condition. Moreover, their teeth are large and their jaws are able to exert enormous pressure. Since I had already had the end of my finger bitten off by a chimpanzee at the institute, I was a little hesitant to be left alone with Lucy. Yet Roger assured me that this was the best method and that Lucy was far less likely to harm me if I was alone with her than if someone she knew were also there. I did not understand this, as it seemed to go against all reason. Why would a chimpanzee be more likely to hurt a stranger such as myself when someone that it already knew and liked was present? Nonetheless, I accepted the advice and agreed to take Lucy out of her cage, bring her into the main portion of the house, and begin to teach her signs.
    It was not as difficult as I had expected. Soon I was even taking Lucy for rides in my two-seater MG all over Norman, Oklahoma. Lucy would point in a certain direction and we would go that way. Sometimes, if I refused to go to a place she really wanted to see, she would take the steering wheel away from me and turn the corner herself. Of course, this could be dangerous, so every moment Lucy was in the car I was always fully prepared to stop immediately in case she decided to drive. She was not permitted to get out of the car, except when we drove to a sixty-acre plot of land outside of Norman, which was owned by the Temerlins. There Lucy could bound out and run free.
    I continued to work with Lucy for two years,