The Experiment | Teen Ink

The Experiment

October 17, 2015
By Layten BRONZE, Weiser, Idaho
Layten BRONZE, Weiser, Idaho
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Scientists have been working for years to be able to improve the minds of animals so much that they were able to communicate with humans. They have been doing this for many years but have no success. They have mainly tried the more intelligent creatures such as gorillas, apes, and many of the animals closer related to humans but every time they take a animal from the wild the animal always end up hurting someone or not cooperating.

After many years the scientists receive a Annie the gorilla from a nearby zoo. This gorilla had only been in the zoo for 2 years and was donated because it had injured a worker there but the lead scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown, believed that since this gorilla had been around humans for a time it might have a chance to understand and be able to communicate with humans. At first they let Annie get used to her new home and also made sure that her cage was far enough from big cities so she wouldn’t be bothered with all the commotion and lights at night so she wouldn’t get distracted from her teaching, but they would also make sure that she would receive constant love and attention.

On tuesday the next week they were ready to begin the experiment and begin teaching Annie. First they began to try to teach her words by giving things that the word describes such as food. Every time they would tell her food they would give her some food. They also tried other words that have objects or actions such as toy, run, see, give, stay, and a few more but when they would give her food she would just eat the food when she saw it and not respond correctly to the word when they said it and would never give things back and would throw tantrums when they took it back.

After their first attempt they decided to wait a few weeks before trying to teach Annie numbers and adding and subtracting. During the first part of the experiment one of the scientists, Mrs. , began to become very close to Annie and would spend much of her time off with her in her cage and playing and grooming with Annie. Since Mrs. Abigail had gotten so close to Annie she became the one to teach Annie things because when others would try Annie wouldn’t listen and would just ignore them and chase them out of the cage. Finally Dr. Brown decided they had given Annie enough time and was ready to try to learn numbers and mathematics so that she might be able to solve problems that include numbers and signs. They began by showing Annie how much a number was worth but, a few days later they realized that the numbers meant nothing to her and she wouldn’t recognize the numbers.

Now they only had one choice in what to teach annie in a way she might be able to communicate with humans and that was sign language. So they decided to give her a week or two to rest before her last test to be able learn a way to communicate with humans and Abigail knew that the only way she could spend the rest of her life with annie was to make sure annie understood sign language. The first day of teaching sign language to annie was a disaster, first she wouldn’t even listen, second she got so mad she nearly attacked abigail. So later that day abigail went into the cage to spend some time with annie and when abigail went in she told that if she didn’t learn sign language abigail could never see her again and at that moment something sparked in annie telling her this was true.

The next day before they were about to begin teaching they received a letter from a bank that they had taken a loan from to do the experiment saying their time was up they had a week before they had to start paying and then they would have to leave and stop the experiment and stop testing and the project would be a failure just like the ones before. They would have to stop and start back at the beginning from scratch. After they read the letter they realized that it would be very hard for annie because of all of the teaching that they would be giving annie in such short time.

On Monday they chose to start by teaching Annie her name. The way abigail taught it was moving annie’s hand in the position of a word and said the letter when annie’s hand was in the position. When they were done teaching the scientist had a decision to make when the loan was up, to keep annie or to put back in a Zoo for the rest of her life but they still had time to decide because there was still a chance for annie to learn the language and not be like normal gorillas.

Then after two more days the saw one morning they saw annie trying to do something with her hand trying to put her fingers in the right place and A in sign language is not hard its just a fist and soon the scientists realized what she was trying to do and that sign language was working for annie. by the end of the week annie had learn her whole name along with a few other words and soon they decided that they were going to keep annie to teach her more,but they didn’t have the money to keep her and then Abigail realized that the only way for annie to stay was for abigail to take her home. Then Abigail and Annie were able to spend the rest of their lives together.



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