---
title: nim the chimp
date: 2008-03-31
---

This is heartbreaking and stupid. Sometimes humans can be incredibly
cruel. It's the story about a chimp that was taken from the wild as a
baby and raised as a human boy with human parents, wearing clothes and
being taught sign language. In the end when the money ran out, they
dumped him:

> ...all the while making it clear he longed for his human family. For
> a creature who would demand hugs after being disciplined, and bring
> tissues to his adoptive mother when she cried, relocating to a world of
> cages and strange, hairy beings was incomprehensible.

even worse:

> There was a children's book all about Nim while he was in New York,
> basically a photo book, and Nim kept his one copy of this book safe,
> even though chimps tend to wreck everything. He would bring it down and
> show the other chimps, then bring it back to his bunk and keep it under
> his sleeping area so that no one could destroy it. He would just look at
> pictures of his New York City family, and himself, over and over again

The [Salon article][salon] I took the above quotes from, and the
wikipedia article on [Nim Chimpsky][nim].

Older chimps taken from the wild surely feel this longing for their
natural parents as well, put into cages with strangers and never to see
their families again.

[salon]: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/31/Nim_Chimpsky/index.html
[nim]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky