Robin Williams helped Koko the gorilla laugh for the first time in 6 months, after he lost his childhood friend…
The whole world fell in love with his sense of humor: Robin Williams made us laugh, that’s true. But his kindness and humility also touched us. And we’re not the only ones: in fact, when he met Koko, a female gorilla, for the first time, even the grieving animal immediately fell for the Jumanji star.
Koko had gained some notoriety since 1978 thanks to her mastery of a form of American Sign Language (ASL) adapted to gorillas and could thus communicate with humans, something few apes have been able to do before her. Robin Williams was invited to meet and talk with her in 2001. And we can say that they had perfect chemistry!
Immediate alchemy
The sequence, which was filmed, begins with the actor discussing his encounter with the gorilla. “I recently had a mind-blowing conversation with a gorilla. Koko is her name.”
At the time of their meeting, Koko was mourning the death of her childhood friend, Michael, a gorilla who had died six months previously. Reportedly, she was not doing well until her interview with Robin Williams.
In the video, the latter is sitting on a chair, waiting for Koko to arrive. When the gorilla enters the room, she sits on the floor next to him and takes his hand. The actor then gets up from his seat and sits next to her. We see them laughing and looking at each other with interest.
“Notice that Robin made Koko smile – something she hadn’t done in over six months, since her childhood partner, Michael, died at the age of 27”said Koko’s caretaker and educator, Francine Patterson (via Today).
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It was clear that the actor immediately put the gorilla at ease.
“Robin’s ability to simply ‘hang out’ with Koko, a gorilla, and become one of her best friends within minutes was astonishing and unforgettable”Patterson said. “But Robin didn’t just lift Koko’s spirits: the impact was mutual and Robin seemed transformed.”
The actor indeed felt the same thing: “We had something unique in common: laughter. Koko understands spoken English and uses over 1,000 words to express herself about daily events, life, love and even death”, declared the actor.
The gorilla would also have signed the word “tear” after learning of the death of Robin Williams in 2014.
Check out Koko and Robin Williams’ incredible encounter in the video below:
An extraordinary gorilla
Born at the San Francisco Zoo, Koko was fed and cared for by humans and spent most of her life in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where she was cared for by the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California.
She had a vocabulary of approximately 1,000 Gorilla Sign Language syllables and also understood approximately 2,000 words of spoken English. His IQ was comparable to that of a 3-year-old human child, according to Francine Patterson.
The gorilla was also known to show empathy towards other animals, enjoying rhymes, good arguments, jokes and insults! She was thus one of the only known monkeys to have a pet: a gray kitten that she had named “All-ball” in the 1980s and that she raised as her own child, playing with him and her. ‘also sometimes accusing him of his own stupidities!
“Koko often used the kitten as a scapegoat when she was naughty. Koko once ripped a steel sink from a wall, pointed at All Ball and signed: ‘The cat did it’”, according to an article in Popular Science.
Koko died in her sleep in 2018 after a long life, at the age of 46.