Michael learned 20 words within his first year with The Gorilla Foundation. Repetition, exaggeration and the creation of new signs by combining signs are techniques which are also used by simian 'signers'. Additionally, repetition and exaggeration of signs is used to create emphasis. In sign language, deaf humans often create new signs by combining two or more signs, to express a concept for which they have no sign. Because of the musculo-skeletal difference between apes and humans, the two gorillas employed a modified version of American Sign Language signs adapted for their physical abilities, sometimes called Gorilla Sign Language (GSL). They both used 'stink' for 'flowers', and 'lip' for 'girl'.

Michael had a vocabulary of over 600 signs, some of which he learned from Koko. Michael also greatly enjoyed painting, and took it quite seriously, as opposed to Koko, who would paint for fun.

He enjoyed listening to Luciano Pavarotti and looking at pictures. Michael's favorite color was yellow, and his favorite television shows were Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. At the age of three, he was brought to live with Koko at Stanford. According to the movie Koko: Conversation with a Gorilla, his handlers felt that using sign language, he was attempting to relate his mother's death at the hands of poachers. Michael's parents were killed while he was still a baby. Michael, an orphan, spent most of his life in Woodside, California, where he became a local celebrity and painter, creating vividly colourful abstract works. Francine Patterson (to whom the gorillas referred using the sign ' penny') and other staff of Stanford University. He had a working vocabulary of over 600 signs in American Sign Language, taught to him by Koko, a female gorilla Dr. Michael (March 17, 1973, Cameroon – April 19, 2000) was the first male 'talking' gorilla.

JSTOR ( December 2009) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)īeing first male gorilla to use American sign language.

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Ishmael gorilla