Relationship Between Miles And Chantek

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In 1978, Professor Lyn Miles at the University of Tennessee wanted to contribute to science by teaching an orangutan how to communicate through sign language. A biomedical and behavioral research institute, Yerkes Regional Primate Centre, agreed to loan Professor Miles a 9 month old orangutan, Chantek. Miles took Chantek to a trailer where he would be raised and where she could carefully replicate the behavior of Chantek’s mother. She went out of her way to make Chantek feel comfortable around her and his surroundings. Miles and Chantek had established a mutualistic understanding of each other which made teaching him easier for Miles. Though he was a wild animal, Miles treated him with the amount of respect she would if he were a human. Once they had understood each other, the amount of words in sign language he knew had majorly increased and he was walking around on campus and sitting in on some of the classes at the college. Later on when Chantek was a little older, he had frightened a girl passing by and the college had to get rid of him and hand him to the Atlantic Zoo.
Researchers have examined the different metaphors people use on a day-to-day basis that give animals a bad connotation: don’t be a chicken; scaredy cat; cow; bitch; shrew. Words such as these give animals a bad image and distort the human’s perception of those animals (Jepson, 2008). Chickens and cats aren’t cowardly, and female dogs are not a negative creatures. The treatment of animals is influenced by how they are socially constructed. The language humans use portrays animals as not only different but also as inferior. Often when people refer to animals they refer to them as “it” and “that” rather than he or she. Objects are bought, sold, and owned. By calling an animal “it”, it reveals the assumption that animals are property rather than living beings (Arran,