Humans are often thought to be the only animals capable of language. But it's difficult to prove a negative like this because we'll never definitively know the subjective interior monologues of other ...

Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called "Project Nim." Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was ...

In this archival episode of The Ear, reporter Alicia Theologides Rodriguez commemorates the 50th anniversary of a controversial Columbia study that explored whether chimps possess the cognitive ...

Many people feel comforted and understood by animals. In that sense, they communicate with them. What they can't do, however, is talk with an animal. Whereas all animals, ourselves included, ...

Not every homo sapiens who sees Project Nim will be moved to pledge membership to PETA. Still, this documentary biopic of the ’70s chimp picked to endure an “experiment” in simian sign language and ...

In his latest documentary, Project Nim, Academy Award-winning director James Marsh traces the extraordinary journey of a chimpanzee raised as a human. The project was the brainchild of Columbia ...

In the 20th century and beyond, several research programs explored the ability of apes to communicate with human sign language, including primate celebrities such as Washoe the chimpanzee, Nim ...

Could a chimpanzee raised from infancy by a human family bridge the gap between species--and change the way we think about the boundaries between animal and human? Here is the strange and moving ...

CHATHAM — The gift of memory is not without its pain. Following the area premiere of documentary “Project Nim,” Joyce Butler, Bill Tynan and Bob Ingersoll shared their first-hand experiences of ...