Herbert Terrace — Not as Good As Many Think

Herbert Terrace, for those who don’t know, is a Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. He is famous for heading the project for Nim Chimpsky, in order to test the limits of ape language and how much they could converse. Herbert Terrace has made many important contributions to comparative psychology and has carried out multiple projects and studies in order to test how animals talk with each other.

In 1985, he set up a cognition laboratory where he began to study monkeys, testing their representation for various learning tasks. While the subject of his study, a chimpanzee, was lauded in the media and many stories were written about the project. It wasn’t all as rosy as you might think. Now, when you take a look at the study, what does it show?

It shows a man who was just willing to experiment on animals. Chimps like Nim were kept with a human family, with surrogate parents. Chimpanzees aren’t made for this. They are designed to remain in the jungles, to roam freely. They aren’t made to be put into T-shirts and kept in human environments. Sure, the chimp might have adjusted, but that’s because they don’t know better.

Experimenting on a chimp is no different than experimenting on a lab rat. The nature of the experiment might have been different, but the crux of it remains the same. During the Language wars, there were many psychologists who tried to raise chimpanzees like humans. The question is, why?

Terrace had public disputes with the Gardners, who were quick to state that the training methods used by Terrace weren’t even utilizing the full potential of the chimps. What he did was simply raise the bar of language and try to showcase that chimps were capable of talking. In fact, Nim was only capable of using a bit of American Sign Language in order to converse with humans.

The problem with the way Herbert Terrace handled the project was that he was too engrossed in proving himself right. During his doctoral dissertation, he showed that a pigeon could be trained in order to discriminate two visual stimuli. Here’s my question, why? Experimenting on animals such as chimpanzees is not a wise idea.

While Project Nim was turned into a film as well, there was one key thing that I believe was missed out; Nim deserved a free life in a jungle, doing what all chimps are supposed to do. Worst still, is when they were done with Nim, the institute to the Lab for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates. He spent his time being heavily sedated and received many injections. Even when there were efforts made to free him, and he was bought out by the Black Beauty Ranch, he was kept isolated in a pen. His frustration began to grow, and he ended up killing a dog in the pen. At 26, Nim died of a heart attack, still inside the pen. Did the ape really deserve it? Terrace’s treatment was abhorrent and should be condemned.