Many animals are known to see and smell better than we do, or they can detect things we can’t, such as magnetic fields. It has long been known that some animals have amazing senses, like dogs have a much better sense of smell than ours, cats can see in total darkness, and humans can do nothing without a flashlight. Some animals can sense things we’re not even aware of, such as ultraviolet radiation from Earth’s magnetic field.
23 year old Penny earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the university of Illinois in 1970. After which, she set a goal to devote her life to primates and in 1971 she began what many consider to be a world-changing experiment but this story began by accident on july 4th 1971.
On the next anniversary of American Independence, a female western lowland gorilla was born at the San Francisco zoo named Hanabiko, the child of fireworks in Japanese or simply Coco.
It was with this baby a year later that Francine Penny Patterson then a graduate student at Stanford university began her work her goal was simple to complete her dissertation on sign language in wild animals.
It was a lifelong endeavor for both Penny and little Coco. After her dissertation, Patterson did not abandon her mentee and in 1976 she founded the gorilla foundation under its ages the gorilla lived the rest of her life in a private sanctuary in the Santa Cruz mountains near Woodside California, Usa.
In order for the gorilla to understand the basics of sign language, Penny had to use all the techniques that are used when working with deaf mute people at first the gorilla didn’t really want to learn so patterson simply showed her the object and repeated the gesture corresponding to it as many times as necessary. Watch video below to know what will happen next to Penny and Coco:
