Official Adoption
The team of Patterson and Cohn were successful! Together they raised $12,000 to officially adopt Koko. After the adoption, they decided to move Koko to the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1979 for further research.
Official Adoption
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A Great Leap Forward
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The fact Penny Patterson was able to even teach Koko some American Sign Language is remarkable and unprecedented! Just by achieving this, Patterson helped prove apes can have linguistic abilities similar to young children. A researcher at York University named Anne Russon stated that teaching Koko sign language, as opposed to solely verbal communication, was a “great leap forward.”
A Great Leap Forward