Humans are often thought to be the only animals capable of language. But it's difficult to prove a negative like this because we'll never definitively know the subjective interior monologues of other ...

In this archival episode of The Ear, reporter Alicia Theologides Rodriguez commemorates the 50th anniversary of a controversial Columbia study that explored whether chimps possess the cognitive ...

Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called "Project Nim." Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was ...

Nim Chimpsky was raised in a human household, diapered, nurtured and taught sign language. Charming and mischievous, the chimpanzee endeared himself to everyone. But in the end the adorable Nim, the ...

Many people feel comforted and understood by animals. In that sense, they communicate with them. What they can't do, however, is talk with an animal. Whereas all animals, ourselves included, ...

ASPEN – Why would a group of humans try to teach sign language to a chimp (and name the animal Nim Chimpsky, after the linguist Noam Chomsky to boot)? At least part of the reason, and the best answer ...

Raising an animal as a human being seems a quaint if misguided notion in this age of heightened understanding of animal behavior and animal “rights.” But this was the organizing principle of a bold ...