Nim Chimpsky Essays

Text A, “Evergreen Pet Cemetery” is an advertisement that promotes the Evergreen Pet Cemetery. It was written in 2008 and discusses how the cemetery offers services for memorials. The text tries to persuade possible customers to use their services. Text B, “A Perfect Pet Comes Frozen to the Core”, is a newspaper article from The Sunday Times. It was written on the 6th of October in 1985. The text discusses the act of freeze-drying dead pets and interviews someone who performed this act. While both

“Do you want a treat?” “Do you want to go for a walk?” “Let’s go for a ride!” Those of us with animal companions all know these phrases because they are spoken very often. The animals may bark, or purr, or tilt their head. We seem to witness this almost every day, but we seldom think about the meaning behind their actions. It begs the question, could animals learn to speak human languages if they wanted? The way that we speak about animal language is drastically different than how philosophers in

whether the chimpanzee, named Nim Chimpsky, could learn human language, specifically American Sign language (ASL). The chimp would be raised within a family and taught human language as a child would. The rationale behind this experiment was extremely popular and thus attracted government and institutional funding. When considering the rational for this experiment it is necessary to discuss it’s ethical implications. Rather than trying to understand why Project Nim was deemed so important that it