INTELLIGENT ANIMALS:

Koko: The Gorilla Who Talks to People

Koko: The Gorilla Who
Talks to People told the
story of how, for the past
44 years, Patterson has
formed an extraordinary
bond with one female
gorilla called Koko and,
supposedly, taught her
how to use sign language
in order to convey
sophisticated thoughts
and emotions.

It’s a project that made Koko world famous and Patterson both a Dr Doolittle-ish hero to some and
a pariah to others (notably among the scientific community. But while the story of the decades
they have spent together was fascinating on one level, I also found it deeply depressing.

For all the years they have spent together – Koko in a cage compound, Penny living nearby and
with a large team of volunteers – there was precious little evidence in this film that Patterson has
made any real progress since publishing her doctoral thesis more than 30 years ago We were told
Koko can now sign over a thousand words and communicate complex thoughts and feelings – but
we were offered very little “proof” apart from one or two short sequences where words were
superimposed on screen when Koko apparently made such signs as: Eat. Drink. More.

Everything else was mediated and interpreted by Patterson, who could have said Koko was
reciting Shakespeare for all most non-signing viewers could judge. This may sound cynical, except
that Patterson’s critics claim that rather than communicate, what apes do is merely mirror and
imitate signs made by humans. There was no attempt to find out the truth. Despite the BBC
camera crew being given a month’s access to Koko in her compound in California, most of the
footage of the gorilla was from the archives.

No sign-language expert was asked for an opinion. No effort was made to assess Patterson’s
achievements, or even whether Koko’s learning had progressed in recent years or come to a halt
completely. All we got really was Patterson’s determination to carry on regardless, and her slightly
creepy fixation on Koko’s failure to breed. In the end, what insights emerged were less about
communication and more about obsession.
 Was Betty the crow a genius—or a robot?
Fourteen years ago, a bird
named Betty stunned
scientists with her
humanlike ability to invent
and use tools. Captured
from the wild and shown a
tiny basket of meat trapped
in a plastic tube, the New
Caledonian crow bent a
straight piece of wire into a
hook and retrieved the
food. Researchers hailed
the observation as
evidence that these crows could invent new tools on the fly—a sign of complex, abstract thought
that became regarded as one of the best demonstrations of this ability in an animal other than a
human. But a new study casts doubt on at least some of Betty’s supposed intuition.

Scientists have long agreed that New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides), which are found
only on the South Pacific island of the same name, are accomplished toolmakers. At the time of
Betty’s feat, researchers knew that in the wild these crows could shape either stiff or flexible twigs
into tools with a tiny, barblike hook at one end, which they used to lever grubs from rotting logs.
They also make rakelike tools from the leaves of the screw pine (Pandanus) tree.But Betty
appeared to take things to the next level. Not only did she fashion a hook from a material she’d
never previously encountered—a behavior not observed in the wild—she seemed to know she
needed this specific shape to solve her particular puzzle.

To figure out how much of an advance Betty had really made, Christian Rutz, a behavioral
ecologist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom, and colleagues spent 4 years
studying 18 wild-caught crows they kept temporarily in aviaries on New Caledonia. Under
controlled conditions, the scientists videoed the animals as they made 85 of their twig tools. Most
of the crows followed the same method. Using their beaks, they broke off small branches from a
shrub, one end of which they then fashioned into tiny hooks by snipping and biting the joint where
the twig had attached to the shrub. And then, unexpectedly, 10 of the birds did one more thing:
They bent the shaft of their tool into a curve by sticking it in a hole or trapping it with a foot, while
pulling the other end into an arc, the researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science.
 Could one pill help you live longer?
The first threat to global health is
not what you think. It is not
pollution, climate change, poor
diets or smoking. It is not cancer,
Alzheimer's or heart disease. No,
the biggest threat to global health is
aging.

The degenerative processes of aging

underlie all the "celebrity" diseases
like cancer, stroke and Alzheimer's
as well as most causes of chronic
pain and disability, like falls and
fractures, arthritis, vision and
hearing loss. We will all suffer from it eventually, and it is the aging process itself, rather than
individual diseases, that threatens to overwhelm our health care infrastructure and cripple our
economy.

The good news is that researchers over the past several decades have discovered that basic aging
processes can be treated. Just as the death rates for heart disease and stroke plummeted once we
discovered how to treat high blood pressure and high cholesterol, similarly by treating basic aging
processes, it will apply the brakes to aging, delaying the many maladies of later life as a group,
keeping people healthy for years longer. As some have put it, in the future it could take a century
to reach age 75.

Our successes in treating aging -- and there are dozens of them, with more emerging all the time --
are at present largely confined to laboratory animals. But medications have been discovered that
can delay mouse versions of cardiovascular disease, numerous cancers and Alzheimer's disease.

These medications have also preserved muscle strength, delayed arthritis, rejuvenated stem cells
and boosted vaccine response among other things. It is time to evaluate the effectiveness of these
drugs in people, which is why the American Federation for Aging Research has proposed the first
such study.

It is called TAME (Targeting Aging with Metformin). Metformin is currently prescribed as the first
line of defense against Type II (adult onset) diabetes, and is taken by millions of people. It has
been proven to be safe and inexpensive. Provocative -- although slender -- evidence links
metformin use to protection against heart disease, cancer, and dementia in addition to its anti-
diabetic effects. So we propose a controlled experiment -- called a clinical trial when done with
people -- that would monitor the comprehensive health status of people randomly selected to get
either metformin or a placebo. Such controlled experiments are the gold standard of evidence.
 The power of volunteerism
People the world over
engage in volunteerism
for a great variety of
reasons: to help to
eliminate poverty and to
improve basic health and
education, to tackle
environmental issues, to
reduce the risk of
disasters or to combat
social exclusion and
violent conflict. In all of
these fields, volunteerism
makes a specific
contribution by generating well-being for people and their communities. Volunteers are motivated
by values like those of justice, equality and freedom as expressed in the United Nations Charter. A
society which supports and encourages different forms of volunteering is likely to be a society
which also promotes the well-being of its citizens.

More than 1 billion people volunteer globally, the majority of them serving in their own countries.
Many are in the forefront of efforts to improve the way they and their fellow citizens are governed
and engaged. Moreover, volunteers are playing a vital role in making governments worldwide
more accountable and responsive to their citizens.

They are working with governments and civil society to hold those in power to account and to
represent the voices of those who are often left out of development decisions such as women,
youth and marginalized groups. The end result is more inclusive –and ultimately more effective–
development.

Volunteerism is a basic expression of human relationships. It is about people’s need to participate

in their societies and to feel that they matter to others. We strongly believe that the social
relationships intrinsic to volunteer work are critical to individual and community well-being.The
ethos of volunteerism is infused with values such as solidarity, reciprocity, mutual trust, belonging
and empowerment, all of which contribute significantly to quality of life. People the world over
engage in volunteerism for a great variety of reasons: to help to eliminate poverty and to improve
basic health and education, to provide safe water supply and adequate sanitation, to tackle
environmental issues and climate change, to reduce the risk of disasters or to combat social
exclusion and violent conflict. In all of these fields, volunteerism makes a specific contribution by
generating well-being for people and their communities.

Volunteerism also forms the backbone of many national and international non-governmental
organizations and other civil society organizations, as well as social and political movements. It is
present in the public sector and is increasingly a feature of the private sector.