Lucy

we've all heard that Chimps are the closest species to humans but how much are they really like us?

In class we listened to an NPR Podcast that told the story about Lucy, a female chimpanzee. She was raised by humans for most of her life. She was used as a scientific project to see how human-like a chimpanzee could really be. She eventually talked like humans and even was sexually attracted to humans. Lucy really opened that gate way into learning more and more about the relations from Humans to chimps.  These studies were a huge break-though and seemed to be going very well but, at age 11 Lucy became to strong and violent so they decided to let her go free on an island with other chimps. A lady named Janet stayed there with her to try to teach her how to be a chimp, she stayed for several years when she was only planning on staying three months. Once Janet thought she was ready she left Lucy and came back 2 years later, only to find Lucy's body, only bones, laying near where Janet used to stay on the island. The best guess Janet had was that she had been poached because there were no signs of other remains.
 I am not 100% sure on how I feel about this story because Lucy did teach us a lot about her human socialization.  But, in the end, this socialization is what probably got her killed.  The ending of this story really tugged at the heart strings though, which is kind of funny considering this is an different species from us.  Once the podcast said that Lucy had probably been poached, I felt a light feeling of sadness.  I did enjoy this story though, it puts a whole new perspective on Human-Chimpanzee relation.