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What 'Nim Chimpsky' taught them all
Nim Chimpsky was raised by humans, but couldn't help being a chimp.
from the March 11, 2008 edition
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Nim was not the only chimp to experience such loss. Hess tells the stories of other chimps placed with human families at the same time Nim was. Many sickened and one even died when separated from their human "parents."
In "Nim Chimpsky" Hess does a good job of rolling any number of stories into one. She vividly recreates the key animals and people in Nim's life. While readers interested only in Nim may occasionally get impatient, for the most part these narrative detours are fascinating, and together they bring to life a world that kept shifting around Nim.
Divorce, academic disgrace, and infighting had nothing to do with him yet all these contributed to the erosion of his quality of life.
Eventually, he became too difficult to maintain outside a cage, even as he failed to decisively disprove Chomsky. Nim, who had been tucked into his own bed each night by loving humans was now sleeping on a cement floor with other chimps.
But the worst was yet to come. When grant money ran dry, Nim was shipped to a medical lab, useful now only as a test subject for vaccines – until his high-profile rescue by animal-loving celebrity Cleveland Amory.
Hess has written about animals and their advocates before ("Lost and Found: Dogs, Cats, and Everyday Heroes at a Country Animal Shelter.") She is clearly an animal lover, yet (with a few exceptions) she resists the temptation to demonize the humans in Nim's life.
Nim was gregarious. He relished human companionship all his life. In his last decade (spent caged in a sanctuary) he also bonded with fellow chimps. He died in 2000 at age 26, about 20 years earlier than would be normal for a chimp.
At Nim's memorial service, the sanctuary caretaker spoke of the profound affection his whole staff had for Nim – how he would play jokes on them, draw pictures for them, sign to them, or steal their shoes (his particular fetish).
It's only too easy to imagine how deeply all the humans touched by him must have missed him. And readers, too, will find that Nim haunts them long after they close the pages of this book.
[Editor's note: The original version identified Nim as a monkey instead of a chimp. (Chimps are apes, not monkeys.)]
• Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments to kehem@csps.com
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