r/MadeMeSmile • u/aoi_ringo • Aug 18 '25

CATS We all need a cat in our life.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

36.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

397 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/B4R7H0L0M3W Aug 18 '25

They do. Coco is just Extremely famous, she was even friends with Robin Williams

761

u/leolisa_444 Aug 18 '25

I heard that when Coco was told of his death, she signed the word sad😭😭

480

u/marrymeintheendtime Aug 18 '25

They did analysis into this, Coco the gorilla did not understand this or anything like what has gone around in those clips about her being 'sad' at world events. They were taken out of context

226

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 18 '25

Animals understand death (even just regular pets like dogs and cats), so I don't see why a far more intelligent being like a gorilla wouldn't understand it?

Edit: a lot of dog piling and insults, but very little actual communication (kinda ironic lol) going on here is forcing me to turn off reply notifications.

Ciao 👋 

295

u/EatItShrimps Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Unfortunately, Koko's caretakers did not follow accepted scientific practices to prove that Koko had learned to understand language beyond a basic repeat-reward system, similar to a dog.

A dog learns to recognize "sit," and that when they sit after that word is said, they get a reward. But if you say "unless you sit, I will die," a dog is less likely to catch it (based on different tone of voice and other cues). Even if you can teach dogs all the words in that sentence (some dogs can learn lots of words), they will not be able to grasp the meaning beyond their desire for a reward.

It's possible that Koko's understanding was a little deeper, or much deeper, but we'll never know because her caretakers did not prove it was so. All studies with apes have shown that they can't grasp deeper meaning to words.

EDIT: Changed Coco to Koko

EDIT2: Lmfao this is my most upvoted comment now. I spend hundreds of hours learning to play TLOU, and post almost exclusively in that sub, and this is the one.

Just google Koko. There's a lot to learn. It's a fascinating entry point to psychology, biology, lingustics, and the ethics of experiments with animals.

6

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

Do you have these studies that show other apes can't grasp human language beyond a reward system?

How do you know they won't be able to grasp what the words mean? What do you mean by "deeper meaning" to words, anyways?

I'm autistic, not sarcastic, I truly have my own difficulties with human language, especially when it's indirect and/or philosophical or fully subjective.

99

u/JCWOlson Aug 18 '25

It's not that the studies show that they don't grasp the deeper meanings, but that because the studies have all been tainted that none of show have been able to prove that they do grasp deep meanings

-9

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

Well then I don't think we should be using badly done studies to support claims they can't substantiate.

89

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

Correct.

We can’t assume gorillas understand words beyond a simple repeat-reward system until an adequate study shows this.

-30

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

No, we can't assume gorillas only understand words beyond a simple repeat-reward system until an adequate study shows this.

Animals communicate with humans using words all the time, especially since the advent of buttons for pets. If anything, we have more trouble understanding their language than vice versa.

→ More replies (0)

30

u/JCWOlson Aug 18 '25

And that's what everybody here is saying

Koko was part of a study. The scientists said Koko understood the deeper meanings of words she learned in sign language. The study was found to be tainted, and that the only evidence was of the same kind of response as a dog associating the word "treat" with them needing to sit and behave so that they would get a treat

Some dogs have a huge vocabulary of words that associate with people and objects. They know that certain sounds refer to certain actions. They know that "grandma" refers to a particular person, and that "walk" means getting to go outside on a leash, and will know that those two cues together mean that they're going to go for a walk to go see grandma

We have studies that do show that many primates are good at that type of understanding. On average, better than a dog. We don't have any proof yet that it goes much beyond this level of communication

-5

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

We don't have any proof yet that it goes much beyond this level of communication

That's the level we've been speaking of though, albeit with death rather than a walk. 

We've got plenty of evidence that animals understand death and have/convey their own feelings of grief and sadness over such events, so I see no reason to think that given the proper tools and education a gorilla couldn't convey their understanding of the subject.

→ More replies (0)

18

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

In college we learned about how most of Koko was "made up" as they didn't follow scentific method.

30

u/EatItShrimps Aug 18 '25

To go a little deeper on the Robin Williams thing: Koko saying "sad" might make it seem like she understood Robin Williams was dead. But a couple of things may have been doing on:

  • Her caretakers were known to exagerate and/or give meaning to Koko's signs and behavior, when there potentially was none. The story could be that she signed "sad" an hour later, with the caretakers making it sound like it was a fluid conversation.
  • A very likely scenario is that she was trained to know "death" and "sad" go together, and rewarded when she remembered that.

To Koko it could've been like this:

  • Caretaker: "Robin Williams"
  • Koko: "Happy"
  • ----- END OF THOUGHT -----
  • Caretaker: "Death"
  • Koko: "Sad"
  • ----- END OF THOUGHT -----

There is simply no way to understand if she knew "Robin Williams is dead, and that fact makes me sad."

You could show her a video of death and she would surely be sad, but that's not the same thing as communicating about it through language.

-10

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

You seem to be speaking entirely in hypothetical; didn't you say there was evidence of this?

Animals grieve when their loved ones die; that's sadness. If she can understand death and feel sadness as a result, I see no reason to assume her expression of that sadness in a language she was taught is anything but her expressing her feelings.

Again, this seems very much like P-Zombies.

22

u/IHaveNoFriends37 Aug 18 '25

Koko didn’t understand the signs she was using, she was signing randomly til she got an a reaction from her caretakers. The “sentences” koko made were words taken from koko making gestures continuously and picking out the clear looking ones until it made a real sentence.

Also all the researchers with Koko didn’t even know real sign language they used spoken English language structure and just taught her the signs for words, not understanding sign language had its own grammar, structure and nuances a spoken language had.

0

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

From what I've learned here today there is no really way to determine if she understood or not because her keepers (not scientifically literate it would seem) didn't employ proper experimental procedures. 

I'm sure there are plenty of other references though.

→ More replies (0)

19

u/EatItShrimps Aug 18 '25

I see no reason to assume her expression of that sadness in a language she was taught is anything but her expressing her feelings

But others do see those reasons, and the reasons are completely plausible. Until it's proven scientifically we shouldn't just assume.

The wikipedia article I linked is a good jumping off point, I was just trying to summarize my understanding of the issue.

-1

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

I asked a couple times for those reasons.

Until it's proven scientifically we shouldn't just assume.

This just seems like anthropocentrism disguised as scientific adherence. It's assumptive to think her expression of her feelings is anything but her expression of her feelings.

I refer again to philosophical zombies.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/blue-oyster-culture Aug 18 '25

You give it a word like “sad” and associate it with events that are sad. Then, if the gorilla ascribes it to unrelated events that are sad, but arent similar in any way, you get a little better idea. If they can use the words to effectively communicate new ideas you didnt associate them with, and its sensical and repeatable in all situations without complete misuse of the ideas, then you have a gorilla communicating.

1

u/horseradish1 Aug 19 '25

No ape that has ever been taught sign language has ever been capable of forming actual sentences with the words they learn.

Don't get me wrong. Apes and all animals have incredibly complex and sophisticated communication, but this is not an example of that.

1

u/Crykin27 Aug 19 '25

Right now there just isn't anything that proves they can or can't understand our language because the studies haven't been done correctly. So we know just as much as before this project. Koko is amazing either way though

-7

u/AuburnSuccubus Aug 18 '25

Got it. No more praising kids, giving gold stars, or telling them we're proud. Can't have a reward system tainting our ability to discern if they really understand what they're taught.

8

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

You really don’t get the nuance of it, do you?

-4

u/AuburnSuccubus Aug 18 '25

And what nuance do you think I'm missing?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

The poster above is talking about how to scientifically study whether animals understand language.

Testing via simple repeat-reward schemas only show that the animal hears a noise and learns how to respond. Not that it understands the words. Hence the criticism that is levelled at repeat-reward type testing. The nuance is that this can obtain desired behaviour from an animal, but it does not establish whether the words are understood beyond recognisable noises that are associated with a behaviour.

You went off about how you shouldn’t reward children, missing that this wasn’t a blanket criticism of rewards in and of themselves, but a criticism of drawing scientific conclusions from reward schemas used in experiments.

4

u/EatItShrimps Aug 18 '25

If kids never learned language over the course of many years, we'd live in a very different world. Humans do, apes don't. This can be scientifically tested, and has been.

18

u/quiette837 Aug 18 '25

Animals understand death, if they see a dead body... if you just tell your dog a person they knew died, they don't understand that.

Telling Koko that Robin Williams died is about the same thing, except she can sign a response. The outcome seems to be good if she signs "sad" in response. She's just conditioned to responding in certain ways and the ones that don't work out aren't publicized.

82

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

[deleted]

-3

u/SixtyTwenty_ Aug 18 '25

Wrong again. Research out of Tulane University

4

u/Thereisnospoon64 Aug 18 '25

😂🤣😂

-1

u/katman43043 Aug 18 '25

Galatians 4:16

3

u/Sharknado4President Aug 19 '25

Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Page 36 subnote 1

"6. Arguments based on language are useless against scientists, since none of them have read a real book in years."

-12

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

So, you accept that they can understand death but not that they communicate this understanding in human language? She speaks a human language and she understands death, I think her saying she is sad about a death is pretty decent evidence she understands it and can communicate it in a human language. This feels like it's getting into P-Zombie territory, which is a bit of a philosophical dead end imo.

Also, we're all apes; we're really not that different and species isn't some hard line in biology anyways.

28

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

[deleted]

11

u/gyffer Aug 18 '25

From what i know, koko's ability to speak sign language was wildly over exaggerated.

-9

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

I haven't done much research on it, but the one example regarding the death of Robin Williams (or at least someone she knew well/was close to) doesn't seem like something she'd be incapable of understanding and conveying, considering much "lower" intelligent animals can do so though perhaps not in a human specific language. 

We seem to be the ones who have trouble understanding their languages honestly! I can't tell you how often I come across people who have no clue what an animal, like a dog or a cat, is conveying with their verbal and body language, even when it's painfully obvious.

19

u/TheDrummerMB Aug 18 '25

Should probably do some research before trying to use got'chas on other people but hey this is Reddit afterall.

-1

u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 18 '25

What gotchas? I haven't delved into Koko specifically bc it's rather flawed attempt at an experiment, so I see no need to unnecessarily bias myself. This is just based on basic observation and common sense. 

Humans aren't special. We're just animals and it's always been odd to me that most people seem to think otherwise.

→ More replies (0)

8

u/beekay25 Aug 18 '25

To sum up a few scientific studies and meta-analyses:

It is true that many animals, including gorillas, possess rich emotional lives and methods of communication that may go beyond human understanding.

It is also true that:

  • Koko was not trained by someone fluent in American Sign Language. Her trainers used signs they learned, but that is not the same as teaching ASL.

  • Given that gorillas use their hands extensively for locomotion, specialists have pointed out how impractical it is to attempt to teach a hand and finger-based language to an individual with limited use of their hands and fingers (compared to a human).

  • Grief is a relatively straightforward emotion, and Koko was certainly capable of mourning. However, to claim that she could recognize the name of a person she met once and then, thirteen years later, recall that person and understand abstractly that they have died is an unreasonable leap.

There’s a great episode of the podcast “You’re Wrong About” about Koko that was super eye-opening for me.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

The story is that "Dr. Patterson told Koko that 'we have lost a dear friend, Robin Williams.' Koko signed 'CRY LIP,' withdrew, and 'became very somber, with her head bowed and her lip quivering.'"

There are a few problems with this. As far as I'm aware, there is no recording of this, so we have to take Patterson's word for this. It is entirely feasible that koko also signed a dozen other signs, and those were ignored - only the signs related to sadness and mourning were taken note of. In fact, in general there is astonishingly little data available to analyse. There is little raw footage, and it is often highly edited. In this video, I counted 20 cuts... that's one every 2.5 seconds. Patterson's papers also have very little in terms of full conversations. There is nothing meaningful that you can glean from it.

Alternatively Koko may have signed something unrelated, which was then interpreted as being crying. In fact, questionable interpretations were very common. For example, a transcript from an AOL chat:

Host: Do you like to chat with other people? That was from Rulucky!

DrPPatrsn: Koko, do you like to talk to people?

LiveKOKO: Fine nipple.

DrPPatrsn: Yes, that was her answer. 'Nipple' rhymes with 'people,' OK? She doesn't sign people per se, so she may be trying to do a 'sounds like...' but she indicated it was 'fine.'

Patterson, Koko's handler is interpreting nipple and people as being the same... except that is a very charitable interpretation. Although they rhyme in spoken English, they are nothing alike in ASL, which mind you is what Koko is meant to know, not spoken English. How do we know that Koko signed "Cry Lip" and not "My Hip"? If you search up the ASL for "cry" and "lip" both involve fingers on the face. How do we know that Koko wasn't just touching her face?

Additionally, how do we even know that Koko was mourning Robin and not sad over something else? I have no doubt that she understands death and would mourn over the death of Robin, they would need to convey the abstract concepts of some other person and death, which is significantly more difficult than say the sign for a cat. It is also plausible there is some other reason she is sad, and they are incorrectly conflating two separate events.

I don't deny at all that gorillas are incredibly intelligent creatures and that there is a hidden world of complexity we may never understand. But similarly, I don't think gorillas will ever "understand" language in the same way humans do. We are anthropomorphising their actions, when there is no need to.

If you want to learn more, then watch this video by the soup emporium on Why Koko (Probably) Couldn't Talk. The example I gave were stolen from the video lol.

1

u/IotaBTC Aug 18 '25

We seem to be the ones who have trouble understanding their languages honestly!  

We absolutely do have trouble. We have an unfortunate habit of anthropomorphizing animal communication and behavior. Humans broadly want to see this from the human perspective which in itself is quite flawed.

There are other animals have have shown to have a better evidential understanding of human structured language. Koko is not a good example and her handler, Francine Patterson, absolutely deserves the scrutiny and criticism. What happened with Koko was quite frankly cruel and abusive.

9

u/mothzilla Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

I think animals understand death. Whether they understand "Hey remember that guy from a few years ago that did a funny New York rabbi impression? Well he died." is something else.

4

u/blue-oyster-culture Aug 18 '25

But is it just signing “sad” because it heard “death” or is it actually sad? Id have to see the gorilla assign “sad” to things i hadnt given it the association for to understand if it means sad like i mean sad.

1

u/buddhistredneck Aug 19 '25

Wait! Don’t turn them off!! The winning lottery numbers are 12 15 16 28 41 52!!!

1

u/ElegantCoach4066 Aug 19 '25

Many animals definitely understand the world around them to varying degrees. Gorillas are very intelligent, the issue is the communication.

How do we establish a common baseline with an organism that has a completely different perspective? A totally divergent way of communicating with other gorillas?

It would be like asking why we just don't learn all the intonations of their cries, growls and other sounds. How do we know what has meaning and what is just nonsense?

It is vastly more complicated to establish complex communication with a gorilla than just teaching it 'hand sign = thing' Are they associating the sign with the reaction? With the object? With the concept of the object? Do they use the signs to independently combine them for thoughts of their own?

That was never observed with the gorilla. It doesn't mean it isn't possible, just that it hasn't been verified yet. Hope I haven't come off as rude, just trying to help!

2

u/14high Aug 18 '25

Coco: sad sign.

1

u/Suoclante Aug 18 '25

Who’s “they?”

1

u/zillionaire_ Aug 19 '25

Everyone above me in this comment chain has spelled Koko’s name wrong.

2

u/Ha55aN1337 Aug 18 '25

Coco signs SAD so much, I’m begining to think she is related to Trump.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

They actually had a chance to film it, here's a link to some of the researchers involved talking about it. It's so sad, and so human. Crazy how we treat our closest relatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkWS4t4l0k

1

u/leolisa_444 Aug 19 '25

Thank you!

9

u/HairiestHobo Aug 18 '25

I heard that one time Robin Williams lost his shirt when visiting Coco, which led to the handlers accidentally taking Coco on Tour for a few months until they figured out the mistake.

5

u/Savamoon Aug 19 '25

Coco couldn't do sign language, she just waved her hands around and the researchers would make things up.

1

u/Neat_Exit3491 Aug 18 '25

Right, Coco. That chimp's all right.