http://www.radiolab.org/2010/feb/19/lucy/ Skip to about 7:26 if you want only her story, and listen to this if your curious as to how the story ended http://www.radiolab.org/2010/feb/19/lucy-the-epilogue/
How would socialization as a human effect a chimpanzee? Would they become like us? How much would they learn? These are the questions that motivated two people to take a very young chimpanzee into their home with them. The story of Lucy starts in 1964, with psychologist Dr. Maurice K. Temerlin, and his wife Jane. Lucy was only two days old when they took her home. They treated her as their own and as a human, not a chimp. Lucy wore clothes, communicated in sign language, could make tea for guests and could draw among many other things. They were very happy together for several years. However, every chimp reaches a point where they experience a massive growth in their strength, and though they do not necessarily mean to, they become very destructive. Dr. Temerlin and Jane, along with a new caretaker, Janis, held on to her for longer than most others who have tried keeping chimps before. But even they eventually had to relinquish her. They did so on a small remote island with Janis and a number of other chimps who had a similar upbringing to her own. The rest, I'll leave in case you haven't checked out the links above just yet.
Lucy was human like in many ways. She could create new sentences, once describing a bad radish that she'd tasted as "cry-hurt food". Lucy also lied, something that we'd previously thought only humans were capable of. Lucy could make tea, drank gin, and read magazines. Also, due to her upbringing, she had become attracted to human males, and when they brought a male chimp over, she was scared of him.
The transition from life as a human to life as a chimp was very rough on Lucy. Janis had to have a cage built up around herself so that Lucy and the other chimps wouldn't stay with her. As the others began to get bored and eventually assimilated to life on the island and as chimpanzees, Lucy continued to stay next to the cage. She wouldn't eat and moved little, signing for Janis to come out from the cage to her, and that Janis was hurting her by not. Janis had to occasionally feed Lucy bits of human food just so the malnourished chimp wouldn't die, and did what she could to show Lucy what she was supposed to do. Finally, one day Lucy took a leaf and offered it to Janis, taking a bite out of another one. That was the turning point, and eventually Lucy was able to lead her new life.
Once a year Janis came to check up on them, the first time bringing articles that had once belonged to Lucy. Lucy looked at them a bit, and then hugged Janis tightly, as though saying that it was ok, and that she understood. The next time Janis came, she couldn't find Lucy and had to search for her. Eventually she found the chimp's skeleton, lying in the place where the cage had once been, with her hands missing and her skull detached from the body. They believed that it was the work of poachers who took advantage of Lucy's familiarity and friendliness with humans.
Many things can be learned from the story of Lucy. I believe that the most prominent lesson though is the ramifications of raising one species as another. By treating Lucy as a human, many barriers were broken down. Things like the food she was used to eating, her sexual attraction to human males, and her aversion to her own species made her very separate from most chimpanzees. It also raises important questions as to how far those barriers can be broken, or if they should be at all. this is the story of Lucy the human chimpanzee. What do you believe?
From this link: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZdLiLgOKlErgz-LqLuB6_zRAUCmmQNJLaNgTfn3G5jGIsTXZzJCXX7zWwM4ftSEmmHZXbV8UF3tijQI5Ihlg2JyezBlxnjVZFLTeUYgRrCXAYnJOGy5B9UnNzpdHd9y6P77ghStw8H-w/s640/LUCY.png
Great job with this Lacey. I love that you added the podcast links and photo.
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