Koko the Gorilla Knew 1,000 Words, Then She Signed Something No Animal Should Be Able to Say

Handed a ring she had no sign for, Koko the gorilla called it a "finger-bracelet." A zebra became a "white tiger." A mask, an "eye-hat." She wasn't repeating trained words — she was building new ones out of the pieces she had. And inventing words is the one thing the textbooks said only humans can do. This is the peer-reviewed version. What linguists mean by "productivity," why it was treated as the line between us and every animal, Koko's strangest coinages, the displacement claim, the apes who may have done it better (Washoe, Kanzi) — and the serious scientists (Herbert Terrace, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker) who say she invented nothing at all. #animalcommunication #gorilla #science