But in itself it does have certain interest. Washoe Chimp trained in American Sign Language and showed the ability to make combinations of certain signs she learned in ways she had never seen before. Nim Chimpsky Chimp Nim Chimpsky, named after the great linguist Noam Chomsky, was the first chimpanzee to learn American sign language. Nim became famous, and was the subject of numerous books and television specials. But when the researchers had no more use for him, they opted to sell him to a hepatitis research lab, where he would have been the subject of painful experiments and eventually killed.
Nim enjoys looking at magazines, watching television, and putting on hats and shoes.
As an infant chimpanzee, Sally was captured in Africa around 1950. Like many wild-caught chimps of this era, she was shipped to the United States, and spent the next twenty years working in the circus. She walked upright, permormed ballet, and was an accomplished bicycle rider, even though she still had buckshot in her abdomen from her capture. This injury kept her from reproducing. In 1970, she was acquired by the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma.