{"id":3257,"date":"2013-08-30T18:18:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T22:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=3257"},"modified":"2013-08-30T18:18:55","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T22:18:55","slug":"project-nim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/project-nim\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Nim"},"content":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “Chimps aren’t humans. You have to… understand chimps to be able to understand how to work with them and be with them.”<\/p>\n

In 1973 Herbert\u00a0Terrace, a professor at Columbia University, decided to do an experiment to see how much sign language could be taught to a chimpanzee. Nim was given as a baby to a family to be raised like a human, and taught signs. After some time Nim was taken to an estate with lots of space and taught in a more rigorous fashion. Could\u00a0Nim really learn a human language?<\/p>\n

Project Nim<\/strong> was released in 2011.<\/p>\n

I did a fair amount of research on ape language experiments<\/a> over 15 years ago, and Nim was one of the apes I learned about. It was nice to refresh my memory about him.<\/p>\n

This documentary shows you archival footage and recent interviews. It doesn’t just show you Nim, but also the humans who looked after him, taught him, and learned from him.<\/p>\n

I was expecting a bit more on the results of the experiment. The movie briefly shows Terrace saying that Nim didn’t learn a language, but it doesn’t really present the alternate viewpoint.<\/p>\n

The movie focussed more on Nim’s life — which had its ups and downs — and the people who were close to him. The sign language experiment lasted 4 years and after that Nim was taken to various facilities, some of which were better than others.<\/p>\n

Parts are happy and parts are sad, but all of it is fascinating.<\/p>\n

The movie was directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

If you watch this movie and want to learn more about apes, I have a list of suggestions<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “Chimps aren’t humans. You have to… understand chimps to be able to understand how to work with them and be with them.” In 1973 Herbert\u00a0Terrace, a professor at Columbia University, decided to do an experiment to see how much sign language could be taught to a chimpanzee. Nim was given as a baby to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[43,20,6,5],"class_list":["post-3257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-documentaries","tag-great-apes","tag-movie","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3257"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3266,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257\/revisions\/3266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}