You may have wondered if highly intelligent animals like the chimpanzee, when bred like humans, can achieve a level of human-like intelligence. If so, you’re not the only one wondering; A couple of scientists tested it live years ago. And in a very strange way that would never come to mind…
Intrigued by the case of two children raised by wolves who remained almost wild all their lives, Winthrop and Luella Kellogg embarked on their own crazy experiment. Winthrop Kellogg was a comparative psychologist. From the early to mid-1900s he devoted his life to understanding intelligent animal species and ran an animal stimulant lab at Indiana State University before doing the same at Florida State University.
When they had a child named Donald, they came up with a plan: They would raise a baby chimpanzee as a sibling alongside Donald and watch their development side-by-side. There was no better way to test whether chimpanzees can behave like humans than by raising a chimpanzee as a human.
The seven-and-a-half-month-old chimpanzee Gua was taken to the Kelloggs home in 1931. Donald was only 10 months old when Gua was introduced to the family, so the two were almost the same age. In the eyes of the family, Gua and Donald were brothers and would be brought up accordingly. He was given constant attention, given the same learning tasks as a baby human, and even dressed in clothes and diapers during his nine months of study.
A documentary was also released comparing the two in different missions.
Gua developed well, gaining fine motor skills and physical strength like any chimpanzee in captivity. According to a newspaper report, Gua was walking upright and could respond to 20 simple commands. It has even been claimed that he is “smarter” than 12-month-old Donald.
However, quickly differences began to emerge. While Donald used physical appearance and faces to describe people, Gua used scents and the clothes they wore. Donald started forming words when he was 16 months old, but Gua couldn’t speak. It seems that while Gua excelled in early missions, in the end his mastermind wouldn’t be able to keep up with Donald’s development.
Not surprisingly, having a chimpanzee sibling began to hurt Donald, and Donald began imitating the sounds Gua made. While the experiment wanted Gua to be more human, Donald was becoming more of a chimpanzee. Nine months later, the experiment was stopped.
Gua was sent back to the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Florida, where he participated in further studies until he died of pneumonia less than a year later.
While unorthodox and highly unethical by today’s standards, the study revealed some fascinating results. Oftentimes, animals were much more intelligent than we believed them, especially in the 1900s, but this development only seems to get them so far. Some primates have even been shown to have vocal abilities to form words, but lack the brain development to cross that bridge.
So, in comparison to other species, though not within our own species, we have a partial answer: Chimpanzees cannot be bred as humans, although they are up to a point smarter than humans (or even smarter by some measures).
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