User:Kanthoney/Lucy

Lucy Temerlin was a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma. She was reared by Maurice Temerlin, a psychotherapist and professor at University of Oklahoma. Temerlin and his wife raised Lucy as if she were a human child, teaching her to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. As a teenager, Lucy learned basic American Sign Language from the primatologist Roger Fouts as part of an ape language project. She appeared in Life magazine, where she became famous for drinking straight gin, rearing a cat, and her use of Playgirl and a vacuum cleaner for sexual gratification.

Lucy has also been observed lying - something once considered uniquely human. In this sign language conversation, Fouts interrogates Lucy about a pile of chimpanzee excrement in the middle of the floor:

Fouts: WHAT THAT? Lucy: WHAT THAT? Fouts: YOU KNOW. WHAT THAT? Lucy: DIRTY DIRTY. Fouts: WHOSE DIRTY DIRTY? Lucy: SUE. Fouts: IT NOT SUE. WHOSE THAT? Lucy: ROGER! Fouts: NO! NOT MINE. WHOSE? Lucy: LUCY DIRTY DIRTY. SORRY LUCY.

When she outgrew her foster parents (chimpanzees are far stronger than humans, and quickly become a handful), Lucy was sent to Africa. Unfortunately, the notion that she would be happy there proved fanciful and, after a long period of homesickness, Lucy was killed by a poacher.