From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   Female chimpanzee, born in West Africa, 1965.   
   "the first non-human who learned to communicate using American Sign   
   Language"   
      
   Originally acquired by NASA to be used in research on space travel.   
      
   Adopted in 1966 (when 10 months old) by Allen and Beatrix Gardner,   
   ethologists, at the University of Nevada, Reno.   
   ("Washoe" is the name of the county they lived in, which is named for   
   the Washo people who also live there.)   
      
   Earlier attempts to teach chimps to speak by bringing them up in a human   
   household had failed due to what seemed to be purely articulatory   
   difficulties. Apes are pretty good with their hands, so the Gardners   
   reasoned they might succeed better using a signed language.   
      
   Washoe apparently learned about 350 signs, and made some original use of   
   sign combinations to express complex ideas.   
      
   At age 5 she was transferred to the Institute of Primate Studies at the   
   University of Oklahoma, and another couple, Roger and Deborah Fouts, who   
   continued to interact with her linguistically until 1980, when she moved   
   to the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at Central   
   Washington University.   
      
   See Wiki for much more detail and references to related projects,   
   bioethics issues, and the continuing skepticism of some linguists about   
   the whole thing. I think we have learned that apes can do more language   
   than we thought, but not as much as we can.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)