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Re: ANTHRO-L Digest - 25 Oct 1995 to 26 Oct 1995
Marie E. Seitz (MarieEliz@AOL.COM)
Fri, 27 Oct 1995 01:02:02 -0400
In a message dated 95-10-27 00:12:50 EDT, Matthew Hill wrote:
>The poor beast seems to have had a most unfortunate upbringing in the
>home of a psychotherapist, Maurice Temerlin, who has written a book,
>Lucy: Growing Up Human, about the experience. She was not returned
>to Africa, since she was born in captivity...Peterson was extremely
interested in Lucy >and writes, second hand, a bit about her experience. It
does not include the anecdote >mentioned but does document Lucy's discontent
with life in the bush and the heroic
>efforts of Janis Carter to get her to adapt (Carter has an article in
Smithsonian for June >88).
Please, don't use the term "beast" to refer to chimps. They have much more in
common with humans than most of us think. It is unfortunate that Temerlin did
not think far enough in advance about what would become of Lucy after his
research was finished (the same thing happened with Washoe, who was lucky
enough to end up with Roger Fauts, also a psychologist). Returning her to the
wild was a bad idea, as she believes herself to be a human, not a chimp. It
is a problem when we are able to glean a little about how animals think and
yet are not concerned with what is learned.
Marie Papachatzis
Dept. of Anthropology
SUNY at Buffalo
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