Dear Friend,
In this weekโs video, I ask Koko to draw what she heard the night before, after coyotes called outside in the dark.
Koko had seemed especially alert to those sounds, listening closely to what was happening beyond her room. I offered her paper and markers and asked her to draw what she had heard.
She chooses her colors, leans over the page, and begins to draw. Her marks are focused and deliberate. Then, when I hold up the finished picture and ask what is there, Koko points to parts of the drawing and identifies them: โgorilla person,โ โbird,โ and โsleep there.โ
We cannot know exactly what Koko intended in every mark she made. But we can see that she was not drawing at random. She listened, remembered, chose her colors, made her marks, and then answered when asked what was there.
Koko was not simply putting marks on paper. She was showing us something she had noticed, remembered, and carried with her from the night before.
With Koko love,
Penny Patterson
President, CEO and Founder
The Gorilla Foundation / koko.org
Conservation through Communication
The Gorilla Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Our Federal Tax ID is: 942-38-6151
