I have just come back from a unique lecture / video conference from the Imax Theatre section of @Bristol.
They rigged up a transatlantic video feed to California and the home of Dr Penny Patterson and Koko – the gorilla she has taught sign language to and worked with for over thirty years. Rather than me tell you all about them head to http://www.koko.org/index.phtml for more information.
At the British end we had a chap whose name sadly escapes me that has been specialising in studying gorillas and recently met Koko. He also has connection with another great ape charity – The Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund. http://www.cwaf.org/index.html
Before the video link he gave an introduction to Penny Patterson who then appeared on the video link and spoke about Koko, the organisation and played a number of short video clips. After that Koko came in and the audience were treated to about three quarters of an hour in her company – eating her lunch, talking to Penny and she recognised the English chap’s voice and his image on the video monitor. She was puzzled as to where he was and kept going back to one of the windows as if expecting him to appear from an outside office.
We saw her looking through books, taking her vitamins, playing with toys and just being generally amazing. Take a look around the http://www.koko.org/index.phtml site, it’s fascinating stuff and not a little emotional.
They rigged up a transatlantic video feed to California and the home of Dr Penny Patterson and Koko – the gorilla she has taught sign language to and worked with for over thirty years. Rather than me tell you all about them head to http://www.koko.org/index.phtml for more information.
At the British end we had a chap whose name sadly escapes me that has been specialising in studying gorillas and recently met Koko. He also has connection with another great ape charity – The Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund. http://www.cwaf.org/index.html
Before the video link he gave an introduction to Penny Patterson who then appeared on the video link and spoke about Koko, the organisation and played a number of short video clips. After that Koko came in and the audience were treated to about three quarters of an hour in her company – eating her lunch, talking to Penny and she recognised the English chap’s voice and his image on the video monitor. She was puzzled as to where he was and kept going back to one of the windows as if expecting him to appear from an outside office.
We saw her looking through books, taking her vitamins, playing with toys and just being generally amazing. Take a look around the http://www.koko.org/index.phtml site, it’s fascinating stuff and not a little emotional.
