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4 unusual facts about Francine Patterson


Francine Patterson

Patterson and her work with Koko are the subject of Barbet Schroeder's 1978 feature-length documentary Koko: A Talking Gorilla.

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The Gorilla Foundation has been trying to move from its current home in Woodside, California to Maui, Hawaii.

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The foundation was founded with her longtime research colleague Dr. Ronald Cohn in 1978 using monetary support from a Rolex Award.

Ronald Theodore Reuther

The following year, Reuther allowed the baby gorilla named Hanabi-Ko, better known as Koko, to become the centerpiece of a project by Stanford University graduate student Francine Patterson, who famously went on to teach Koko to communicate through sign language.



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