J.H Kerr in Snow Lake, Manitoba and Turnberry Central in Wingham, Ontario have been reading a book “Half Brother” by Kenneth Oppel. The book brought many emotions into the two classrooms. Once we had finished Half Brother, we had watched the movie “Project Nim.” This documentary is about a chimp, Nim Chimpsky and how his story went.
There was many similarities to the two pieces. Nim and Zan were both chimps doing language experiment. Both chimps got too big and too hard to handle. Zan and Nim were both biting causing a hazard to humans. The characters were also quite similar. Bob was a help to Project Nim, and Peter was a big help to Project Zan. They both are the reason that the signing got as far as it did. They were both treated like human with very little chimp like motions. I think that Wer and Ben were similar in a way. Ben at the start didn’t like Zan, and Wer didn’t like Nim.
The differences I found was a great surprise. Nim was allowed to wash dishes and clean the cages and sweep the house, while the Tomlins, Zan’s family, had to lock up the dish-soap so Zan couldn’t get at it. Stephanie, Nims owner, let him drink and smoke. Zan wasn’t introduced to alcohol or drugs.
For me, there was some disturbing parts. At the start when Dr. Lemmon shot Carolyn, Nim’s mother, I thought that it would hurt Nim if he didn’t get the right aim. When Stephanie let Nim smoke and drink I thought, if they were treating Nim like a human baby, then why are they letting him smoke? When Nim was sent back to where he came from, the chimp cages in Oklahoma didn’t really have me convinced that this is the right spot. Cattle prod the one thing that was in the book I hoped wasn’t in the movie. The cattle prod wasn’t one of my favorite tool they used on the chimps. When Nim was sold to the LEMSIP Biomedical lab and there were chimps being stuck with needles, I didn’t feel very well at all. It made me sad to see what was going on inside a biomedical lab.
There were many ways to make someone happy in the movie. When Nim was playing with Bob, Stephanie, Laura, and Herb it made you happy to see that they played with Nim and had fun while learning. He did learn a lot of signs, and made some up too, like a clap is “play.” Nim loved to play with other animals. He really liked to play with the cat. Once Nim was moved to Black Beauty Farm, he met another chimp Lulu and got along and played with her very well.
After reading Half Brother and watching Project Nim, I have found new information that wasn’t in the book, but was in the movie. The scientist got the baby away from the mother wasn’t in the book but was in the movie. They shot the mother with a tranquilizer gun, and got the baby before the mother fell on it. At the end of Half Brother, Zan was sent to a sanctuary and nothing else was said. In Project Nim, Nim was sent to Black Beauty Farms and Lived for twenty-six years. Nim died of a heart attack in 2000.
How do you think that Nim was treated differently then Zan was?
