Name: Investigating the Guy Who Raised a Child with a Chimp
Uploaded: 2025-10-16T14:30:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Investigating the Guy Who Raised a Child with a Chimp' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Investigating the Guy Who Raised a Child with a Chimp' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-16. Transcript available.

Your story reminds me of this guy.
They had this guy.
I want to say his name was Marco.
Oh, I'm thinking of a guy, Dr. Wiggins.
There was a guy, Dr. Wiggins, maybe John Wiggum.
He raised his child with a monkey.
Oh, whoa.
That's cool.
Oh, this is it.
Sorry, Winthrop Kellogg.
Oh, boy.
Winthrop Kellogg's experiment, commonly known as the ape and the child,
involved raising a baby chimpanzee named Gua alongside his own son, Donald,
under identical conditions to study the effects of environment
versus hereditary on development.
That's crazy.
Yeah, in 1931, Kellogg and his wife bought Gua,
then seven and a half months old, into their Florida scroll up.
It's always Florida.
It's always Florida.
There's nowhere else.
Where else are you raising a monkey and an ape and a kid together?
Florida, dude.
It's got to be Florida.
It's not like this is happening in London.
You know what I mean?
It's always Florida.
That's our Africa.
Yeah, it's our Africa.
He ended their Florida home to grow up with Donald, their 10-month-old son.
Both children were given the same care and subjected to daily scientific
observations.
Can we see a video of it?
There's no way this kid grew up normal.
Oh, no.
Look at the little shoes on them.
I know they put shoes on the chimp.
Dude, are you kidding me?
Do you ever just think I was born in the wrong era?
Like, if I was born in the 30s, I'd do this.
Oh, for sure.
I'd have nine kids and five chimps.
No problem.
And I live in Florida.
Oh, it was a different time.
Look at them right here.
They're trying different stuff with them.
That's crazy.
Trying to put a hat on each of their head and then teach the monkey to keep it
on its head.
And he just keeps pulling it off the kid's head.
Do some tickling.
Oh, man.
That's nuts.
And they're just tickling both of them.
Yeah, if you guys get to watch on YouTube, I mean, this is absolutely
ridiculous.
It's bonkers.
I've never heard of this.
That's crazy.
What were some of the findings?
Can you go back?
Oh, here we go.
Gua learned many human behaviors.
She dressed in clothes, walked upright.
Ooh, used a spoon.
That's crazy.
Drank from a glass, opened doors, and imitated gestures of affection, sometimes
outperforming
Donald in motor skills and tasks.
The Kellogg's concluded that there are definite limits to how much non-human
species can be humanized.
Towards the end, Donald began imitating Gua's chimpanzee vocalizations, raising
concerns about potential language delays for the human child.
Wow.
So the human also ended up becoming more like the chimpanzee.
Why did they end it?
Did they say why?
Because the chimp ate the kid's face.
I know, dude.
I mean, that's how these things always end.
It really is, dude.
It's like, there's no good coming of this.
Look, it's the same reason why we ended the pit bull circus that we were doing
in our backyard.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Ends one way.
Winthrop Kellogg concluded that while Gua behaved like a human child in many
ways, her physical and brain structure limited how human she could become,
confirming the experiment's demonstration of hereditary limits.
After the experiment, Gua was returned to a primate center and sadly died less
than a year later.
Donald's later life was marked by tragedy as well, dying by suicide at 43.
God.
That's not good.
In short, the experiment ended due to concerns about Donald's language
development.
Gua's increasing strength and behavior, yup, and the practical and ethical
difficulties.
I mean, it's just, there's a whole argument for nurture over nature, but at the
end of the day, chimpanzee is incredibly strong.
They get violent.
The best way, I think, to describe it is when a chimpanzee sexually matures, it
doesn't mentally mature past that of like a toddler.
So when a three-year-old throws a temper tantrum, it's like, be quiet, you know,
and you restrain them or whatever.
When a full-grown chimpanzee throws a temper tantrum, it rips you to shreds.
Right.
And it might not hate you or anything else.
It's just a temper tantrum.
Right.
The same as a two- or three-year-old does, right?
Oh, that's fascinating.
Yeah.