|
The Gorilla Foundation
The Gorilla Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1976 by Francine Patterson and Ronald Cohn in order to purchase the young gorilla named Koko from the San Francisco Zoo. Patterson had been teaching Koko American Sign Language since 1972, under custody of the zoo. In 1974, Patterson moved the project from a trailer at the zoo to a new compound at Stanford University, yet there was a possibility that Koko would need to be returned to the zoo, so Patterson raised money to buy and keep her. After the purchase, the foundation continued to support Patterson's research as she worked with Koko, in order to research language acquisition by non-human animals. Besides Koko, the foundation also kept two male gorillas: Michael from 1976 until his death in 2000, and Ndume from 1991 until his return to the Cincinnati Zoo in 2019. Koko died in 2018, and after her death followed by the transfer of Ndume, the foundation no longer had any gorillas on which to conduct research. Beginning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francine Patterson
Francine "Penny" Patterson (born February 13, 1947) is an American animal psychologist. She is best known for teaching a modified form of American Sign Language, which she calls "Gorilla Sign Language", or GSL, to a gorilla named Koko beginning in 1972, although the scientific validity of Patterson's claims as to the extent of Koko's language mastery has been debated. Early life and education Patterson is the second oldest of seven children and daughter of C. H. Patterson, a professor of psychology, and Frances Spano Patterson. She was born in Chicago and moved with her family to Edina, Minnesota, when she was young, and then to Urbana, Illinois. Her mother died of cancer when Patterson was a freshman in college and the youngest of her siblings was just five years old. This triggered her interest in developmental psychology, a theme which pervaded much of her later work. Patterson earned her bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ndume (gorilla)
Ndume is a male western lowland gorilla known for having learned a limited amount of a modified version of American Sign Language (ASL) and for being at the center of lawsuit over his custody between the Cincinnati Zoo and the Gorilla Foundation. Ndume has lived most of his life at the Gorilla Foundation's sanctuary at Woodside, California, but has also lived at the Cincinnati Zoo and the Brookfield Zoo. Following a lawsuit, which raged on for months, Ndume was transferred back to the Cincinnati Zoo from the Gorilla Foundation on June 14, 2019. Early life Ndume was born at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1981 to his father, Ramses and mother, Rosie. Ramses currently lives at the Fort Worth Zoo and Rosie lived to be 43. Ndume also has an aunt Samantha who lived to be 50 and an aunt Gigi who lived to be 47. As a young gorilla, Ndume was playful and highly social. Ndume grew up with three or four gorilla peers. At the age of 3, Ndume began to be cared for by Ron Evans, who was 17 at the time, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a port for lumber and other goods. The county seat of San Mateo County in the heart of Silicon Valley, Redwood City is home to several global technology companies including Oracle, Electronic Arts, Evernote, Box, and Informatica. The city's population was 84,292 according to the 2020 census. The Port of Redwood City is the only deepwater port on San Francisco Bay south of San Francisco. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and (44.34%) is water. A major watercourse draining much of Redwood City is Redwood Creek, to which several significant river deltas connect, the largest of which is Westpoint Slough. History The earliest known inhabitants of the area which was to become Redwoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primate Conservation
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians ( monkeys and apes, the latter including humans). Primates arose 85–55 million years ago first from small terrestrial mammals, which adapted to living in the trees of tropical forests: many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging environment, including large brains, visual acuity, color vision, a shoulder girdle allowing a large degree of movement in the shoulder joint, and dextrous hands. Primates range in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which weighs , to the eastern gorilla, weighing over . There are 376–524 species of living primates, depending on which classification is used. New primate species continue to be discovered: over 25 species were described in the 2000s, 36 in the 2010s, and three in the 2020s. Primates have large ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organizations Established In 1976
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from the Greek word ''organon'', which means tool or instrument, musical instrument, and organ. Types There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions, etc. A hybrid organization is a body that operates in both the public sector and the private sector simultaneously, fulfilling public duties and developing commercial market activities. A voluntary association is an organization consisting of volunteers. Such organizations may be able to operate without legal formalities, depending on jurisdiction, includin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Ape Language
Research into great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans to communicate with humans and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, lexigrams, and mimicking human speech. Some primatologists argue that these primates' use of the communication tools indicates their ability to use "language", although this is not consistent with some definitions of that term. Apes that demonstrate understanding Non-human animals have been recorded to have produced behaviors that are consistent with meanings accorded to human sentence productions. (A ''production'' is a stream of ''lexemes'' with semantic content. A language is grammar and a set of lexemes. A '' sentence'', or statement, is a stream of lexemes that obeys a grammar, with a beginning and an end.) Some animals in the following species can be said to "understand" (''receive''), and some can "apply" (''produce'') consistent, appropriate, grammatical streams of communication. David P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gorilla
Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or five subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 95 to 99% depending on what is included, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after chimpanzees and bonobos. Gorillas are the largest living primates, reaching heights between 1.25 and 1.8 metres, weights between 100 and 270 kg, and arm spans up to 2.6 metres, depending on species and sex. They tend to live in troops, with the leader being called a silverback. The Eastern gorilla is distinguished from the Western by darker fur colour and some other minor morphological differences. Gorillas tend to live 35–40 years in the wild. The oldest gorilla known is Fatou (b. 1957), who is still alive at the advanced age of 65 years. Gorillas' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bushmeat
Bushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are hunted for human consumption, most often referring to the meat of game in Africa. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity for inhabitants of humid tropical forest regions in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Bushmeat is an important food resource for poor people, particularly in rural areas. The numbers of animals killed and traded as bushmeat in the 1990s in West and Central Africa were thought to be unsustainable. By 2005, commercial harvesting and trading of bushmeat was considered a threat to biodiversity. As of 2016, 301 terrestrial mammals were threatened with extinction due to hunting for bushmeat including primates, even-toed ungulates, bats, diprotodont marsupials, rodents and carnivores occurring in developing countries. Bushmeat provides increased opportunity for transmission of several zoonotic viruses from animal hosts to humans, such as Ebolavirus and HIV. Nomenclature The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Fund For Animal Welfare
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is one of the largest animal welfare and conservation charities in the world. The organization works to rescue individual animals, safeguard populations, preserve habitat, and advocate for greater protections. Brian Davies founded IFAW. IFAW was instrumental in ending the commercial seal hunt in Canada. In 1983 Europe banned all whitecoat harp seals products. This ban helped save over 1 million seals. IFAW operates in over 40 countries. History The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was founded in 1969, in initial efforts to stop the commerciahunt for sealpups on the east coast of Canada. With offices in 15 countries, and projects in more than 40, IFAW is one of the largest animal welfare organisations in the world. The fund is supported by individual and major corporate donors, the latter including the Disneynature and the Disney Conservation Fund, the Petfinder Foundation and Arctic Fox, among others. Activities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature Reserve
A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for purposes of conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research. They may be designated by government institutions in some countries, or by private landowners, such as charities and research institutions. Nature reserves fall into different IUCN categories depending on the level of protection afforded by local laws. Normally it is more strictly protected than a nature park. Various jurisdictions may use other terminology, such as ecological protection area or private protected area in legislation and in official titles of the reserves. History Cultural practices that roughly equate to the establishment and maintenance of reserved areas for animals date bac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Cohn
Ronald Herbert Cohn (November 11, 1943 – September 16, 2022) was an American zoologist who was a long-time research collaborator of psychologist Francine Patterson in her work in training Koko the gorilla in the use of American sign language. He documented much of Koko's life on film and on camera, and is credited as the illustrator for the children's books ''Koko's Kitten'', ''Koko-Love!: Conversations With a Signing Gorilla'', and ''Koko's Story''. One of his photos of Koko was featured on the cover of ''National Geographic'' in 1978 and 1985. At the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ..., he received his bachelor's degree in 1965, his master's degree in zoology in 1967, and his Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D. in biology in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Primate Conservation")
