Animals: Babe & Chimpanzee

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Nine months ago Dr. Winthrop Niles Kellogg, professor of experimental psychology at Indiana University, got a year's leave of absence, moved to Orange Park, Fla., with his wife and10-month-old son. From his friend Professor Robert Mearns Yerkes of the Yale Experimental Station he borrowed a 7½-month-old chimpanzee. He clothed his chimpanzee in cap, jumper and diaper, fed it with his child, kept it in the baby's room, where it spent long hours playing on the floor with Junior Kellogg.

For nine months babe & chimpanzee were inseparable. They quarreled occasionally, but not often. Together they learned to wear shoes, eat with a spoon, drink from a glass, use a rake & hoe, untie a slipknot. When the chimpanzee was scolded it cried like a baby. Soon both learned to understand a few words. At first the chimpanzee understood better than the baby. When Dr. Kellogg left the room the chimpanzee remembered for 30 minutes which door he used; the child forgot after five minutes. When Dr. Kellogg called, the chimpanzee was the first to answer.

Last week Dr. Kellogg completed a comprehensive series of tests, reported on his experiment to the Mid-Western Psychological Association at its meeting in Bloomington, Ind. The tests tended to show that most of the behavior of both human and simian infants is not natural but acquired through teaching. The chimpanzee, having a shorter lifespan, develops more rapidly than a human being.