Lucy, a chimp who was raised as a human

This isn't a very good article, but the story is interesting. Also about it:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/401/transcript

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91706-lucy

This project, and others like it, strike me as an extraordinary waste of time.

Think of how remarkable it would be if Chimpanzees in captivity began to speak. This would mean chimpanzees have the language capacity but, in every observed chimp, it simply never occurred to them to use it?

It’s about as likely as finding a flightless bird somewhere and teaching it to fly.

While it seems patently obvious to us now, in the 21st century, that raising a chimpanzee apart from other chimpanzees is a bad idea, I don't think it was as obvious in the 1970's as the article makes out. Lucy had already been separated from her mother at a young age before the researchers ever met her, so it's not like a "natural" situation was even possible at that point. Now we have people who know what is possible and what is not, in regards to chimpanzee rehabilitation, but I think it was not so clear at the time.

What a heartwarming ending...

It's interesting to me just how alienated from male chimps that she never mated with any of them. My impression was that female chimps are much less selective or resistant to sex.

Lucy’s end really pisses me off. How can there be such cruel pieces of sh*t living in our world.

Great piece, but I was struck with a thought about the researcher’s name.

Maurice Temerlin - that last name is so close to “Tamerlane”, the mongol ruler that I wonder if there’s any correlation at all or would it just be a coincidence that the names seem similar?