Lucy Temerlin
Lucy was a Chimpanzee who was raised by a human family, Maurice and Jane Temerlin. Lucy was part of an experiment to see the effects of growing up with humans. She was raised to act like humans. When Lucy's family would have company over she would greet them with tea because it was the proper thing to do. She could handle silverware and learned up to one hundred and fifty signs to communicate. She also was potty trained. Her family calls her their daughter, which shows their close relationship with the chimpanzee. Lucy could pick up on emotions. She would comfort her family if they were sad by acting and wrapping her arms around them. Lucy had a tutor to help her learn sign language. The tutor she had was a primatologist that taught American sign language named Robert Fouts. They would read books together and play while her tutor would teach and babysit her.
It was amazing to notice the intelligence of her when she did a shocking and interesting thing. One day, Lucy went and grabbed a glass, gin, and a magazine. She opened a magazine to a naked men and began to masturbate. This brought up the idea that the chimpanzee was attracted to human men. They decided to introduce Lucy to a male chimpanzee to see her reaction. Lucy was not inviting and didn't make much contact with the chimpanzee. Soon the family began to realize that Lucy was no longer a chimpanzee, in fact she was more human.
All chimpanzees reach an age where they become five to seven times stronger than humans and cannot be held in a close, and inclosed place. When Lucy began to mature she was destructive. She would destroy their entire living room in a matter of minutes. When guests and family would come to visit, she would jump on the guests, and knock them over. Lucy's family knew that they could no longer keep her in the house. They had to get rid of her because of how many things she would destroy because of her strength and body size.
The scientists traveled the world looking for a good place to let her go. They felt that the best way to honor her is to let her go in the wild rather than caged up in a zoo. They finally decided on a place so they took her and began to introduce her to the environment and where she will remain for the rest of her life. The climate was very different than what the chimpanzee was used to. There was high humidity, and as a result Lucy felt stressed out and was losing hair and getting infections due to the new environment. The family decided that they couldn't leave Lucy there. After more traveling they found a perfect spot on an island that they would release her with other chimpanzees. Janis a care keeper of chimpanzees let the scientists know she would stay back with Lucy until she was comfortable. It took her months and months to finally adapt to the environment. At first she was unwilling to eat food other than human food. Janis would leave her for certain amounts of time after she began to get used to the island and living on her own. After she left her there for up to a year with no visits, Janis came back to see her body left. From the looks of her body, they came to the conclusion that Lucy had been skinned and killed. It is thought that Lucy began to confront people since she was comfortable with people and as a result they killed her.
After learning about this tragic story it made me realize how much chimpanzees can learn and how well they can adapt to an environment they were raised in. It is still shocking to me to think that the humans didn't think through the consequences of what would happen to the chimpanzee when she grew up. If the Temperlins knew what they were getting themselves into, they wouldn't have risked the life of an animal for an experiment. This story is really depressing because of the relationships Lucy created with humans that loved her, however, it was a great informative story that I learned a lot from.
