[3] It was created in order to purchase a female western lowland gorilla named Koko from the San Francisco Zoo.
The claims that Koko has invented compound words, and uttered meaningful sentences have been widely rejected and face significant methodological criticisms.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Foundation tried to raise money to move their operation from its sole location in Woodside, California, to a new ape preserve in Maui.
[18][19][20] A common criticism is that most of the signs they used were used chaotically in order to meet a goal, without regard for sentence structure, making them not true language.
In 2012, nine staff members including caregivers and researchers out of "roughly a dozen" resigned, and several submitted a letter to the board to explain their concerns.
The source stated that the official diet they were told to give Koko was appropriate, but that Patterson would visit and feed her "chocolates and meats."
"[22] Multiple employees corroborated the claim that both Koko and Ndume were given "massive" numbers of supplements on the recommendation of a naturopath; Safkow recalled that the number was between 70 and 100 pills per day, and "Sarah" claimed that various inappropriate foods like smoked turkey, pea soup, non-alcoholic beer, and candy were used as treats to coax Koko to take the pills.
In 2012, a group of former employees reached out to a blogger who focused on the ape caregiver community, who in turn asked the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to follow up on the claims.