Introduction - We Are All Primates

Homo sapiens are the highest form of consciousness that we are aware of. But what is this thing that makes us unique, this consciousness? Maybe we can begin to glean an answer to the question by looking to our nearest living relatives.

When I was in college at OU in the early 1970’s, my studies were focused in Psychology. During my senior year, I had the privilege of taking an Advanced Studies course which was limited to 15 students and was taught by the notorious Dr. William Lemmon in his home. Bill, as he was called by all who knew him, was something of a cult figure at OU. He was, for a period of time, the most prominent psychologist in Oklahoma. Over several decades, he authored many of the state’s mental health policies, helped to shape numerous public programs, and virtually founded the clinical psychology department at OU. While any of these accolades would have been reason enough to be taking a high-level psych course from this man, the real reason we were there every week was that he also was the founder and head of the Institute for Primate Studies (IPS).

Elizabeth Hess recalls the purpose of the IPS and the chimpanzee studies in her book, “Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human,”. “Convinced that comparative studies between humans and chimpanzees would lead to new insights into the evolution of the human brain, something researchers still knew very little about, Bill wanted to find out everything he possibly could about chimpanzee behavior and early development. The key, he believed, was raising the chimps in human homes, where their ‘humanness’ could be reinforced and made more distinct and observable. Lemmon planned to cultivate a colony of human-raised chimps that were kept isolated from members of their own species, and a parallel colony of chimps reared by their natural mothers and living in a large social group. When in a whimsical mood, he wondered, occasionally to the press, whether or not chimps could learn to talk, understand the value of a dollar, or drive cars.”

Once a week, we would clamor into Bill’s house hoping that we would learn something about primate behavior and specifically about Lucy, the current chimpanzee star at the IPS. Lucy was being raised as one would raise a human child by Dr. Maurice Temerlin and his wife, Jane. Lucy was being taught to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. She was also being taught signs taken from the American Sign Language by Roger Fouts as part of an ape language project. I can remember hearing the story about how Fouts would arrive at Lucy’s home each morning, where she would greet him at the door with mugs of tea that she had just made.

One evening, I arrived at Bill’s home and was greeted by a grad student who told me that Bill was running a few minutes late. As I was ushered into the family room, he told me that our class was going to be introduced to Lucy that evening. A few minutes later, Bill and Lucy entered the room. The air was electric as Bill gave us instruction on how to greet the amazing 11- year old chimpanzee. She was covered with black hair except for her hands and feet. She was very animated and moved quickly around the room signing with her fingers “Hello.” 

It was then that I experienced the most amazing thing. Lucy came to where I was sitting and stopped, turned, and looked at Bill as if asking for permission. Bill nodded and then told me to relax as much as possible and not to bolt off the couch unless I wanted to be bitten. Lucy then crawled up into my lap and sat there staring at me eye to eye. Although she stood only about 3 to 4 feet high and weighed about 100 pounds, Lucy pinned me back into the couch. She took a deep sigh and I swear she smiled at me. Then she engulfed my nose, mouth and chin in her open mouth. It lasted only a few seconds and then she leaped onto the floor and walked over and sat at Bill’s feet. I had been kissed. 

In 1960, Dr. Jane Goodall started her lifelong study of chimpanzees in the wild. Since then, chimpanzee observations and testing have offered insights not only into chimpanzee culture, but into our own as well. Chimpanzees develop different cultural practices depending on their environment, and transmit their culture as learned behaviors like feeding, mating, grooming, and tool use.

Group structure, communication, and hunting practices are often common from one chimpanzee group to another. Through research, many mental traits that were once considered unique to humans have been demonstrated by chimpanzees, such as reasoned thought, abstraction, generalization, symbolic representation and a concept of self. Chimpanzee behavior is complex and their mental capacity is very developed. It should not come as a surprise that chimps band together to build social structures like small families and tribes. Tribal war and murder are practiced to gain or defend territory.

In ways, they are very similar to humans. Mental differences may only be limited to the human capacity for language, which does not exist in chimpanzees. The chimpanzee genome, which was sequenced for the first time in 2005, differs from the human genome, nucleotide-for-nucleotide, by about 1.23 percent. The comparison found that a single gene, FOXP2, gives us a language advantage over chimps. If this difference was to disappear, it is possible that we would someday compete with chimpanzees for scarce resources like our distant ancestors. It seems logical, given the nature and mental complexity of chimps, that if these magnificent primates could develop a language and communicate in writing, they could transmit more complex learned behaviors such as laws and morality based on collective memory from generation to generation. Without this capacity of language, chimpanzees are likely to be the same animal for the next million years that they have been for the past million years.

We know that chimpanzee consciousness is different from human consciousness primarily because of language. Does language make us more conscious? What is this thing we call consciousness? Are there qualities of consciousness?