Historically, there have been many cases of children accidentally being raised by wild animals and acting like them, but it is almost impossible to integrate into human society.
So in the 1930s, the American comparative psychologist WN Kellogg carried out an experiment that raised a young chimpanzee with his own biological son to prove the hypothesis that chimpanzees could not speak and have behaviors. bad behavior is because they are not raised and raised in human society as children.
The experiment to test the hypothesis that chimpanzees can’t talk and don’t have good manners is because they weren’t raised as children.
Initially, Kellogg selected families with young children to volunteer to participate in the experiment and asked them to strictly control their behavior and treatment so that there was no discrimination in raising and teaching. coax the chimpanzees and their offspring.
But in practice this has failed because those volunteer parents always have difficulty in discriminating and always prioritize their own children.
Understanding those difficulties and how difficult it is for volunteers to fulfill his experimental requirements, this psychologist decided to participate in his experiment himself.
Gua, a 7-month-old female chimp, was adopted by the Kellogg family.
When his son Donald was 7 months old, this couple of psychologists decided to take home a similar-aged chimpanzee named Gua to officially begin the experiment. .
Since then, the little chimpanzee has received more love and care from his human adoptive parents and Donald has a younger sister.
The chimpanzee was raised with his son Donald as if they were brother and sister.
Kelloggs strictly adheres to the comparison of physiological data on weight, blood pressure and height of Gua, Donald from the very first days of adopting Gua and considers this little chimpanzee no different from his own.
Kellogg’s original plan for this experiment was to run for 5 years, but in reality it was forced to mark the 9th month because the little chimpanzee did indeed have good behavior and expressions and was more human-like. , but his biological son Donald is the complete opposite, he is like a chimpanzee in a human body.
Not only is Gua very obedient, but when she does something that is not allowed, she will ask her “parents” for forgiveness with kisses and hugs, even Gua knows how to actively signal before they want to. go to the toilet.
Gua has learned to hold a spoon with her hands and understand a bit of human language. However, the animal did not make as much progress as the experiment had hoped.
As for the chalk Donald, he has always been cognitively slower than Gua and has behaviors similar to chimpanzees, he perfectly reproduces the chimpanzee’s howls when it wants food and makes panting noises. gasp violently at the sight of a favorite food.
In Donald’s eyes, the boy always considered Gua as a leader, although he was taught to walk, most of the time he used all four legs to move like chimpanzees, in addition, he also learned a lot. Gua’s many bad habits such as biting people, using his mouth to pick up things.
During the 9 months of the experiment, Donald could only learn 3 single words, while an average child of the same age was able to speak about 50 words fluently and began to speak simple sentences.
Gua not only obediently obeys but also knows how to use kisses and hugs to show affection.
That’s why Kellogg had to cancel this experiment because Gua could not speak and behave exactly like the human that Donald – his biological son turned into a chimpanzee in the form of a child.
After the experiment, Gua was sent back to the chimpanzee population in Orangery, Florida and continued to be raised by its own parents.
However, as Kellogg had surmised, Gua could not get rid of the habits formed during the experiment and could not stand life in iron cages.
Gua’s psychology is completely unstable because she does not know whether to behave like other chimpanzees or behave like a child when she was raised at Kellogg’s house and died of illness at the age of 3.
During the 9 months of conducting the experiment, Donald always followed the chimpanzee’s behavior and the bad habits of Gua.
After parting with Gua, Donald had a completely different transformation, he changed bad habits like chimpanzees, cognitive and language abilities were also developed quickly and kept up with children. other in the same age group.
Donald was even smarter than normal kids and became a psychiatrist after graduating from Harvard Medical School.
Although there were no serious consequences, decades later, Kellogg himself was still strongly criticized by society for the experiment.