5/8/2023 0 Comments Synopsis of monkey beach![]() ![]() "The nature-versus-nurture debate clearly was part of the intellectual climate of that time and remains an interesting question – how much we are born a certain way, as a species and as individuals. He's in the wrong context and that becomes his tragedy," Marsh says, drinking his third espresso of the morning on a drizzly Sunday in Edinburgh. "Nim behaves in a way that is normal for a chimpanzee, but he's in a human world. He has used archive footage, photographs and interviews with those who cared for Nim to create a tribute to the chimp and his turbulent life. ![]() Nim's life story is told in Project Nim, a new documentary by Man on Wire director James Marsh, described by the New York Times as a "probing, unsettling study of primate behaviour". His name is a pun on Noam Chomsky, the linguist who theorised that language is unique to humans, which the experiment hoped to disprove. Highly intelligent, he was chosen to be the subject of a language experiment at Columbia University, called Project Nim, that aimed to discover whether or not chimpanzees could use grammar to create sentences if they were taught sign language and nurtured in a similar environment to human children. Nim Chimpsky, to give him his full title, was born at the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma, in the early 70s. ![]() W hether he's zooming past in a pushchair, perched on a lavatory seat or getting a little too intimate with a passing cat, it's impossible not to be charmed by Nim the chimpanzee. ![]()
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