Shocking film depicts the truth of a family who forced their little kid to grow up with chimps in a ‘disturbing’ experiment…

Footage from a contentious 1930s experiment demonstrated the differences between a nine-month-old infant and a chimp in various scenarios after being reared together.

It’s an unusual experiment, but it’s not surprising considering the concept originated over a century ago.

Winthrop Niles Kellogg, a comparative psychologist, and his wife took home a newborn chimp called Gua on June 26, 1931, and intended to raise her alongside their own infant, Donald.

The proposal was later described in the Psychological Record as an experiment to demonstrate how the environment influences development and if a chimp can truly think like a person.

Origins of the experiment

Kellogg had always wanted to undertake this sort of experiment as a psychologist, and he was particularly interested in wild youngsters raised with little to no human interaction.

For obvious reasons, the Americans rejected the concept of abandoning a human kid in the woods and instead brought a young animal into human existence.

So, how did the experiment work?

Kellogg would go on a never-ending run with his wife for the following nine months, doing a variety of tests on their son and the chimp.

It was said that they would spend 12 hours each day carrying out these tasks and recording findings.

They would raise each in the same manner and then conduct trials on them in areas like problem-solving, ticking, strength, depth perception, and obedience, among others.

Some of these were captured on camera, and the archival material was released on YouTube; nevertheless, one test stood out more than the rest. Take a peek.

A disturbing detail

To test their ‘responses to a loud sound’, the psychologists decided to position the chimp and infant up next to each other, facing the camera, while a guy discharged a pistol behind them.

It merely appeared to be a blank, but you might certainly predict that health and safety regulations and animal legislation now would prevent this from happening.

Gua appeared to respond immediately to the commotion, seeking comfort from her father, Kellogg, by crawling right onto him and appearing worried, while Donald was somewhat startled but otherwise unbothered.

Despite performing well in early tests, the chimp was said to have hit a ‘cognitive wall’, as the Psychological Record authors detailed: “(The experiment) probably succeeded better than any study before its time in demonstrating the limitations heredity placed on an organism regardless of environmental opportunities as well as the developmental gains that could be made in enriched environments.”

There was an unexpected ending.

However, the experiment would stop abruptly, either because of the difficult parenting and scientific labor or because Gua was rapidly developing and posing a threat to Donald’s well-being.

The authors of the Psychological Record stated: “Our final worry is why the experiment terminated when it did.

“All we know is that the study ended on March 28, 1932, when Gua was gradually rehabilitated and returned to the Orange Park primate colony.”

“But as for why, the Kelloggs, who are so specific on so many other points, leave the reader wondering,” they told me.

However, Donald began copying Gua’s chimp noises, even though she showed no evidence of understanding human speech.

“In short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study,” the researchers said.