Dear Friend,

In the above video, taken in 2005 when Koko was 31, Koko smells something enticing and signs “Apple-Nut-Ball” to me. The food she’s requesting—a cooked artichoke—is covered on a tray nearby.

I realize that Koko can likely smell the warm artichoke and interpret her creative combination of signs.

This moment demonstrates Koko’s ability to invent new signs for objects, revealing her intelligence and linguistic creativity.

Koko created a number of these compound sign combinations, like “Finger-Bracelet” for Ring, and “Scratch-Comb” for Brush. You can see more of these in the video.

Koko learned over 1000 signs in ASL, but there remained things (like artichokes) for which she didn’t know the sign and thus had to create one (like apple-nut-ball) to get her point across. We always did our best to interpret these “compound signs” so that we could satisfy her needs and wants — which is critically important for any animal in a captive setting.

When Koko communicated, we listened, and if we didn’t understand one of her invented signs, we had to figure it out!.

Thank you for watching!

Conservation through Communication

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