Tarzan, Gua, and Me

I loved Tarzan as a kid.

I read the books and comics that featured him, watched the movies, TV series, and animated episodes he ruled, and became him in the woods next to my home. The only thing that actually kept me from running away from home to become Tarzan was the fact that I hate apes. Loathe might be a better word. Detest and abhor are good words as well. And as someone that hates apes the last thing I wanted to do was coexist with some. I knew if I did make a home with gorillas, I might actually become the thing I detest most. Years later I learned that comparative psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg actually proved such.

Kellogg, like me, was always fascinated with stories of children raised in the wild with little to no human contact. He wanted to conduct a study on such but as dumping a human baby in the woods to be raised by animals (or eaten by them, I suppose if the experiment went wrong) was ethically frowned upon even in the 1930’s, Kellogg decided rather to bring the wild into his home. He, along with his wife Luella, adopted a 7 1⁄2-month-old chimpanzee named Gua to raise alongside their 10 month old son Donald.

Born on November 15, 1930, in Havana, Cuba, the female Gua was shipped to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Orange Park, Florida on May 13, 1931, following the death of her owner. Gua was brought into the Kellogg home on June 26, 1931, and raised alongside and in the same manner as her human counterpart and brother Donald.

Yeah. All science aside, the Kellogg’s were just plain weird.

The Kellogg’s raised the chimp / human duo and for the next nine months and for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, conducted tests on Donald and Gua. The Psychological Record reports that the Kellogg’s constant experiments included subjects such as "blood pressure, memory, body size, scribbling, reflexes, depth perception, vocalization, locomotion, reactions to tickling, strength, manual dexterity, problem solving, fears, equilibrium, play behavior, climbing, obedience, grasping, language comprehension, attention span and others." Gua did far better than Donald on most of these. An example of this would be that by the end of the experiment Gua could understand and respond to more than 20 commands. Donald could only grasp three.

Despite all that was being learned, the experiment came to a screeching halt on March 28, 1932, when Kellogg’s realized Donald was becoming more chimp-like than Gua was becoming human-like. Nothing brought this fact home quite as much as the fact that Donald started “speaking” chimpanzee. The human child would grunt, whine, and pant like Gua.  

Our kid’s a monkey. Experiment canceled.

Although considered by many at the time a failure (and by today’s standard’s unethical and absolutely bonkers) the Psychological Record authors wrote that the Kelloggs' experiment "probably succeeded better than any study before its time in demonstrating the limitations heredity placed on an organism regardless of environmental opportunities as well as the developmental gains that could be made in enriched environments."

In other words: Chimps can’t become human, but humans can and will easily revert toward chimp behavior.

Duh! I learned that from Tarzan way back in the day.

Gua died of pneumonia on December 21, 1933, at her home facility in Florida. Donald killed himself in 1973. He was 43 years old.

This piece first appeared in the Fredericksburg Standard.

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