Humanizing the ape

The interpretation of results from experiments with anthropoid apes to show the inferiority of these animals when compared to humans is spurious because (1) the training of the apes has seldom if ever been undertaken at an early enough age to prohibit their already having acquired many fundamental animal modes of reaction, and (2) the responses which the ape acquires when not the subject of investigation are largely overlooked in their effect upon his behavior both during and outside the periods of experimentation. If an experimental animal can learn laboratory tricks in one-eighth (or less) of his waking life, "must he not learn a very great deal in the other seven-eighths, even though no specific effort is made to motivate him by hunger or punishment?" Evidence is brought forward to show that if human children were confined in cages as are captive apes and were taken out for only an hour or two of experimentation daily, their behavior would probably not differ from that of anthropoids to any marked extent. The author proposes to rectify these errors by giving the ape the same environmental advantages that the human child enjoys. He suggests an experiment by means of which a human family adopt an anthropoid ape and raise it from birth, not as a pet, but in all respects exactly as a child. The experimental situation, par excellence, should be attained if the ape were taken into a human family which already possessed a young child of about the ape's age. Case studies of the two organisms raised under the same conditions would then be possible. Certainly the animal in these circumstances would acquire in a natural manner many human responses and it is even possible that it would develop human speech--at least in a rudimentary form.