Chimp who knew sign language dies
Washoe, a chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept.
Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University’s Ellensburg campus since 1980. Her keepers said she had a vocabulary of about 250 words.
Born in Africa about 1965, she died Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders of the Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute on the campus.
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