Chimpsky was named as a pun on linguist Noam Chomsky, who posited that humans are "wired" to develop language.

[2] Over the course of Project Nim, the infant chimp was shuttled between locations and a revolving group of roughly 60 caregivers, including teenagers and grad students, few of whom were proficient in sign language.

[13][15] Stephanie LaFarge and her daughter Jennie Lee used signs sporadically, focusing instead on play and establishing trust, which they saw as a developmental need.

They did not maintain records of Nim's development and did not support the harsh discipline practices that Terrace and his lead trainer at the time demanded.

By mutual agreement two years later, Nim was moved out of the LaFarge brownstone and into a large house in Riverdale, where a grad student, Laura-Ann Petitto, took over as primary caregiver.

In fact, by giving chimpanzees the ability to sign, the means were created for them to produce narratives about the experiences that they endured.

[24] Mary Wambaugh, a deaf woman fluent in ASL, joined the team three years into the study and raised concerns that the others were improperly signing.

She told Terrace that Nim was being taught a pidgin version of the language, not proper ASL, which has a structure and set of rules.

[28]Joyce Butler, who took over as primary caregiver after Petitto quit, said that Nim was nearly impossible to wrangle in the classroom and would repeatedly ask to leave by signing "dirty" to go to the bathroom.

Over intense resistance from staff, he sent Nim back to the Institute for Primate Studies in 1977[6] and then set about analyzing his data.

"[31] The videotapes, Terrace argued, proved that Nim mimicked his teachers and used signs strictly to get a reward, not unlike a dog or horse.

He made these claims after examining brief video clips of the apes taken from a NOVA documentary[32] and a film by Allen and Beatrix Gardner.

But IPS founder William Lemmon recognized the critical importance of apes' social interactions and connected the cages so that chimps had access to each other.

The switch from a human environment to concrete cages with alien beasts caused intense stress and, in some cases, self-mutilation.

Also, several students in Roger Fouts' sign language program enjoyed working with Nim and took him out for walks on the grounds.

Faced with the loss of funding, William Lemmon arranged to gradually sell off chimps to a New York University (NYU) biomedical lab, LEMSIP.

(Roger Fouts, who had been working with several IPS chimps, had suddenly left for a new position in Washington, taking Washoe and Loulis with him.

[34]) Beginning in December 1981, IPS started sending chimps to LEMSIP, including many, like Nim, who had been used in sign language research.

[6] When Bob Ingersoll found out about the LEMSIP plan, he called his Nim contacts to launch a protest and press campaign.

[37] Henry Herrman, a lawyer who had caught wind of the story in the Boston Globe[38] reached out to Terrace, who had been quoted, to offer his services.

(According to James Mahoney of LEMSIP, Terrace had known about the move for several months and only acted outraged when the press attention hit.

[39]) Though NYU initially ignored the press, the mounting legal threats and negative attention made holding on to the celebrity chimp — Nim — no longer worth it for the university.

In 1983, philanthropist Cleveland Amory stepped in to buy Nim, by now a celebrity, and brought him to his equine sanctuary, Black Beauty Ranch, in Texas.

Meanwhile, Nim studied the locks on his cage and would periodically escape and run into the manager's house, raid the refrigerator, and sometimes turn on the TV.

After hearing about Sally's death, Ingersoll arranged to help get three new chimp companions for Nim: Kitty, Midge, and Lulu.