The Baby Experiment Raised as Siblings with a Chimpanzee

Kellogg’s experiment, also known as the “Gua Project,” showed that a chimpanzee raised with a child was increasingly will look human was foreseen. The chimpanzee Gua and baby Donald, raised under exactly the same conditions, were the lead actors in this experiment.

However, something completely opposite to what was expected happened, that the chimpanzee would evolve into a human-like baby increasingly chimpanzee it looked like. If you’re ready, let’s look at the details of this strange experiment together.

Intrigued by the wild children raised by wolves, animal psychologists Luella Kellogg and her husband Winthrop Kellogg wanted to conduct experiments of their own.

Winthrop Kellogg and his wife, Luella Kellogg, are intrigued by the case of two children raised by wolves and left in the wild all their lives. to your own crazy experiments they attempted.

Winthrop Kellogg, a comparative psychologist, lived from the early to mid-1900s. intelligent animal species devoted to understanding. He worked in an animal stimulant lab at Indiana State University.

He used his own child as a test subject.

Winthrop Kellogg, who made various experiments on animals, expanded the business in 1931. on primates He decided to experiment, and he and his wife, Luella, began planning the experiment. What they needed was a child and a chimpanzee. When they adopted a 7.5-month-old chimpanzee named Gua, there was only one thing left, a child.

However, they had a very difficult time finding a child. The Kellogg family then decided to use their own child, 10-month-old Donald, as a test subject. By monitoring the development of the child and the chimpanzee, Like human They wanted to test whether they could behave.

The chimpanzee Gua got exactly the same treatment as Donald.

In the family’s eyes, Gua and Donald were brothers and would be brought up accordingly. in captivity gua; She was constantly being cared for, given the same learning tasks as a human baby, and even wore clothes and diapers for her nine months of work.

Comprehensive coverage of topics such as “blood pressure, memory, body size, scribbling, reflexes, depth perception, vocalization, movement, strength, problem solving, fear, balance, play, obedience, comprehension, language ability, attention span, reactions to tickle” scientific experiments done.

For a while, the chimpanzee Gua did really well in these tests compared to Donald.

It developed well, gaining fine motor skills and physical strength like any chimpanzee in captivity. Gua, to Donald, under the doors to spy on people even taught.

Gua used the same forms of communication as Donald. When he was laid on the bed, he was reaching for a humane hug. She was giving kisses. Various emotional states He was imitating facial expressions to show off.

According to newspaper reports of the time, when Donald crawled, Gua was walking upright and could respond to 20 simple commands. However, differences began to emerge quickly. While Donald uses physical appearance and faces to describe people, Gua smells and the clothes they wear was using.

Gua’s fall behind started with the language barrier first.

Donald started forming words when he was 16 months old, but Gua couldn’t. animals, human language Even though we know today that he did not evolve with the necessary equipment, both in the mouth structure and cognitively, to be able to use it, it was still a subject of research at that time.

It seems that even though Gua excels in early missions, his mastermind is Donald’s in the end. cognitive development wouldn’t be able to keep up.

The boy looked more and more like a chimpanzee.

Not surprisingly, having a chimpanzee sibling hurt Donald, and he began imitating the sounds Gua made. She screamed like Gua when she saw food, biting while playing and chimpanzee movements was exhibiting. The experiment wanted Gua to be more humanoid, while Donald was more of a chimpanzee. Within nine months, this interesting experiment was stopped.

Returning to the experimental center when their work was finished, Gua died within a year.

When they were done with Gua, who was raised like a member of the family, they locked him in a cage and sent him back to the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Florida. here for about a year behavioral experiments became a test subject.

Gua’s life; a caged child from a child raised in a human home with a two-parent family, a sibling, a house, clothes, and a bed lab primate became. A few months later, Gua fell ill and died.

Evolution has handed humans and chimpanzees to different fates.

Although it was unusual and highly unethical by today’s standards, the study had some limitations for that period. fascinating results had revealed. It turns out that animals are much more intelligent than we believed, especially from the 1900s perspective.

Some primates have even been found to have some vocal abilities to form words, but not completely. vocal language They lack the brain development to be a speaker. So, although they were up to a point as smart as humans (or even smarter by some measures), evolution has handed them over to a different fate.

Donald committed suicide at the age of 42.

Moreover, another development occurred last year. Donald, who spent 9 months of his life as a brother to a chimpanzee, committed suicide at the age of 42. Try unable to get over Although there are estimates for his suicide, the exact reason for his suicide is unknown.