The Story

The story told by Michael, a large silverback gorilla, is of the death of his mother. He accurately uses ASL (American Sign Language) to describe the event. Watch This

The story begins while he is eating a squash and then hears a sharp loud noise. He begins to cry and senses trouble. He then describes a cutting motion to the neck area - reference to his mother.

Analysis

It is quite amazing the potential this type of research has when applied to a relatively intelligent species. This is not the only example of an ape using sign language, but his story alone is quite amazing. It touches on two aspects of their intelligence- their long term memory and their ability to communicate the past. See Koko

In our own human evolution, our ancestors may have gone through the same transitional phase of the development. The ability to communicate well would have been a turning point in our history. It has been shown that ape mothers that learn sign language, begin to pass their knowledge down to their young. There is much similarity to our own mothers as they taught us how to walk and talk.

This may very well be a glimpse of the past of our evolutionary history. Communication has been necessary for the development of humans as we are today and to an extent is a definitive characteristic.