High levels of intelligence are not only found in human beings, much of our way of life is shaped by the way we are socialized. In biology we recently listened to a podcast about one of the many chimpanzees who are raised as humans by humans. The star chimpanzee of this story, named Lucy, was extremely human-like. Her "parents" ended up keeping her for ten years, an incredible amount of time to keep a chimpanzee in the house. As she matured to an age where her tendencies and instincts became more and more wild, they eventually had to let her go.
What followed this was an extremely heart-wrenching story about a group of chimps struggling to find their way in the wild with human supervisors. Lucy ended up holding on much longer than the others, and was pining away after life as a human. She would not leave the sight of her supervisor and she would not eat anything except the small rations of food the supervisor could spare to keep Lucy alive. Eventually Lucy was brought around to the wild side and learned her way in the wild on an isolated island with the other chimpanzees that grew up as humans.
The supervisor was eventually able to leave and her visits became rarer and rarer to this deserted island. One final visit led to the discovery of Lucy's bones minus the hands. Poachers had come by and Lucy, being overconfident around humans because of her upbringing, found herself an easy target to the eager poachers.
This story showed me the fragile barriers between animal and human and the small steps that can be taken in the discovery of the major effects of socialization that reach even beyond our species. I was blown away by this story and am amazed by the readiness Lucy felt towards humans when she was raised like this. It is so different from the lifestyle of the traditional chimpanzee and yet chimpanzees can be so entirely human if you nudge them in the right direction.
I have always been aware of the similarities between chimps and humans but I was never aware of the extent that this relationship could be taken. The intelligence of both species is really highlighted in this story and it puts emphasis on the small pieces of life that we take for granted but are so amazed at when another species does the exact same thing due to socialization. This experiment had a tragic end and resulted in death but I feel like it was entirely worthwhile. It explained all of the similarities and the differences in our species and it showed the truth that humans are not entirely all-powerful and untouchable, we can be directly affected and copied by close species. I was disappointed in Lucy's ending because she was killed by the compassion she inherited from the humans but it showed how once someone is socialized, habits are hard to break and, in this case, resulted in death.
