Female chimpanzee, born in West Africa, 1965.
"the first non-human who learned to communicate using American Sign
Language"
Originally acquired by NASA to be used in research on space travel.
Adopted in 1966 (when 10 months old) by Allen and Beatrix Gardner,
ethologists, at the University of Nevada, Reno.
("Washoe" is the name of the county they lived in, which is named for
the Washo people who also live there.)
Earlier attempts to teach chimps to speak by bringing them up in a human household had failed due to what seemed to be purely articulatory
difficulties. Apes are pretty good with their hands, so the Gardners
reasoned they might succeed better using a signed language.
Washoe apparently learned about 350 signs, and made some original use of
sign combinations to express complex ideas.
At age 5 she was transferred to the Institute of Primate Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and another couple, Roger and Deborah Fouts, who continued to interact with her linguistically until 1980, when she moved
to the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at Central
Washington University.
See Wiki for much more detail and references to related projects,
bioethics issues, and the continuing skepticism of some linguists about
the whole thing. I think we have learned that apes can do more language
than we thought, but not as much as we can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)
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