The story that we listened to was about Lucy the chimpanzee and her upbringing and eventual integration into the wild. Lucy was a chimp that was brought up by two people in a home, where she was raised and treated like a human being. This story involves Lucy’s “parents”, Charles Seiber and his wife, Rodger Faults her sign language teacher, and Janice, a former cage cleaner and close friend to Lucy, as well as Lucy herself.
Lucy was human-like in that she was raised and treated as a human being until the point where she became too strong for the continuation of her treatment as a daughter. Lucy during her time in the Seiber house learned to communicate through sign language, eat at the table with silverware, make tea and serve drinks. The transition from a home environment to living in the wild among other chimps was not an easy experience for Lucy. Upon her first arrival in Africa, Lucy came down with many infections and did not react well to the departure of her parents. However her friend and former cage cleaner Janice, stayed behind to help assist Lucy through her transition. Janice took Lucy and a few other chimps who were undergoing similar transitions to an empty island where her and the chimps were able to live for several years. However quickly into the experience on the island Janice realized that the chimps would not leave her side and therefore not integrate themselves into the environment on the island. So Janice had a cage built for her to live in so that the chimps cold no longer cling to her side and refuse to live on their own. Eventually the other chimps left Janice and began to live on their own, but Lucy stayed, Lucy after a year finally began to drift away from Janice’s cage and live on her own.
There’s a lot that can be learned from Lucy and her experience. One of many things being that chimps have many of the capabilities that we accredit solely to humans. They have the ability to utilize language, to feel and read emotions, and to make connections. We can also learn the negative effects that such lessons can have on chimps in that they become lost between being human and being an animal. What I will remember most about this story is the sadness, that Lucy made connections with people and loved them, yet she was forced away from them and the only life that she truly understood.
