However, the couple got more than they bargained for when it was actually their son Donald who ended up becoming more ape than man.
The experiment had to be cancelled as reportedly the tot started to make noises like a chimp and began to become more aggressive, even biting people.
He grunted and barked like his “sister” when he wanted more food and would mimic her behaviours.
Donald also began to move on all fours like the chimp – and the two would even wrestle like two wild animals.
Seeing what was happening to their son, the Kelloggs terminated the experiment – and Gua was sent away, dying of pneumonia just a year later aged 3.
And while not much more is known about Donald, he later killed himself aged just 43 in 1973.
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On June 26, 1931, the Kelloggs welcomed their new arrival, a baby chimpanzee called Gua, who they would raise alongside Donald.
It was a bid to see whether environment would influence a chimp’s development – and how how human they could make it.
The test was due to last five years – but it was abandoned after just nine months.
Other theories as to why the test was axed include claims it was cancelled because Gua was becoming too strong and may have harmed Donald.
Gua was seven-and-a-half months old and Donald was a smidgen older at 10 months when the trial began.
And both infants were subjected to cruel tests such as being hit on the head with spoons, spun round in chairs, and being teased by their mum & dad.
Kellogg was fascinated by children raised in the wild with little to no human help – and felt the best way to try and replicate that was bring a chimp into his home.
“What would be the nature of the resulting individual who had matured … without clothing, without human language and without association with others of its kind?” he asked in his 1933 book, The Ape and the Child.
He knew abandoning a human child in the wilderness was be morally reprehensible so instead, he opted to bring an infant animal into modern society.
For the next nine months, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, Kellogg and his devoted wife – both comparative psychologists – conducted test after test on Donald and Gua.
They were raised in the exact same way: they both wore baby onesies, made to sit in a high chair, slept in a bed and were kissed good night, though Gua was carted around in a small wagon.
Our final concern is why the project ended when it did
The Psychological Record
Gua was taught the kind of things a fond parent would do to a baby girl.
All the while, Kellogg ran a barrage of tests and started probing Gua and Donald’s “blood pressure, memory, body size, scribbling, reflexes, depth perception, vocalization, locomotion, reactions to tickling, strength, manual dexterity, problem solving, fears, equilibrium, play behavior, climbing, obedience, grasping, language comprehension, attention span, and others,” The Psychological Record author’s note.
According to one report, the Kelloggs would tap Donald and Gua’s heads with spoons to hear the difference in the sound of their skulls and made loud noises to see who would react faster.
They even tried to convince Gua not to eat soap bubbles by jamming a bar of the product into her mouth.
Eerie footage of the experiment shows Gua and Donald being put in high chairs and being spun round and round until they start crying.
They were also pushed to complete cruel tests in which they were put through a labyrinth and forced to get out while the perimeters changed around them.
For a while, Gua excelled in these drills compared to Donald; but after they both turned one, things began to change.
Gua’s physical advantages were slowly eclipsed by Donald’s ability to formulate words and the doctors soon realised they had hit the chimp’s limit of intelligence.
Authors in The Psychological Record said the Kelloggs’ 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”.
But the experiment suddenly came to an unexplained end, the publication said, adding: “Our final concern is why the project ended when it did.
“We are told only that the study was terminated on March 28, 1932, when Gua was returned to the Orange Park primate colony through a gradual rehabilitating process.
“But as for why, the Kelloggs, who are so specific on so many other points, leave the reader wondering.”
There were rumours they were simply exhausted from nine months of non-stop parenting and scientific work.
Gua showed no signs of learning human languages, but Donald, on the other hand, had began imitating her chimp noises.
“In short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study,” the The Psychological Record authors wrote.
What’s more, OZY reports, Luella Kellogg became increasingly concerned Donald was becoming more chimp than human.
Gua and Donald would wrestle in a way that looked more chimp-like and she had taught her older brother how to spy on people beneath doors.
Donald began biting people and crawled like his sister. He grunted and barked like her when he wanted more food.
Winthrop continued working at Florida State University where he took up research on bottle-nose dolphins and sonar until his retirement in 1963.
He and wife Luella both died in the summer of 1972.
This Guy Simultaneously Raised a Chimp and a Baby in Exactly the Same Way to See What Would Happen
When treated as a human, the baby chimp acted like one—until her physiology and development held her back
On June 26, 1931, comparative psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife welcomed a new arrival home: not a human infant, but a baby chimpanzee. The couple planned to raise the chimp, Gua, alongside their own baby boy, Donald. As later described in the Psychological Record, the idea was to see how environment influenced development. Could a chimp grow up to behave like a human? Or even think it was a human?
Since his student days, Kellogg had dreamed of conducting such an experiment. He was fascinated by wild children, or those raised with no human contact, often in nature. Abandoning a human child in the wilderness would be ethically reprehensible, Kellogg knew, so he opted to experiment on the reverse scenario—bringing an infant animal into civilization.
For the next nine months, for 12 hours a day and seven days a week, Kellogg and his wife conducted tireless tests on Donald and Gua.
They raised the two babies in exactly the same way, in addition to conducting an exhaustive list of scientific experiments that included subjects such as “blood pressure, memory, body size, scribbling, reflexes, depth perception, vocalization, locomotion, reactions to tickling, strength, manual dexterity, problem solving, fears, equilibrium, play behavior, climbing, obedience, grasping, language comprehension, attention span and others,” the Psychological Record authors note.
For a while, Gua actually excelled at these tests compared to Donald.
Comparative Tests On A Human And A Chimpanzee Infant Of Approximately The Same Age, Pt 2Watch on YouTube Logo
But eventually, as NPR notes, Gua hit a cognitive wall: No amount of training or nurturing could overcome the fact that, genetically, she was a chimpanzee. As such, the Psychological Record authors write, the Kelloggs’ 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.”
The experiment, however, ended rather abruptly and mysteriously. As the Psychological Record authors describe:
Our final concern is why the project ended when it did.
We are told only that the study was terminated on March 28, 1932, when Gua was returned to the Orange Park primate colony through a gradual rehabilitating process. But as for why, the Kelloggs, who are so specific on so many other points, leave the reader wondering.
It could be that the Kelloggs were simply exhausted from nine months of nonstop parenting and scientific work. Or perhaps it was the fact that Gua was becoming stronger and less manageable, and that the Kelloggs feared she might harm her human brother. Finally, one other possibility comes to mind, the authors point out: While Gua showed no signs of learning human languages, her brother Donald had begun imitating Gua’s chimp noises. “In short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study,” the authors write.
In 1963, Kellogg officially retired from Florida State, although he would return to that campus on several occasions in temporary faculty positions. In 1962, however, he began his association with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) at Menlo Park, California, where he established two large research projects. One was funded by NSF and involved investigations of sonar in sea lions, while the second was funded by the National Institutes of Health and involved echolocation in blind humans. The grants were for long-term projects, but it is unlikely that Kellogg ever saw his involvement in the projects beyond the first year or two. He hired two of his doctoral students from Florida State to direct the investigations – Ronald Schusterman for the sea lion studies and Charles Rice for the human echolocation studies. In February 1965, Kellogg resigned from SRI. He and Luella spent much of their remaining days together traveling to various parts of the world. Both died in the summer of 1972.[1] Their son, Donald, died by suicide in January 1973.[10]
Personality
Kellogg’s personality is uniformly described by those who knew him. He had little tolerance for those he saw as unjust and unethical (despite running an experiment on his own son) and knew who “were the incompetents and scoundrels in science”.[1] He had great self-confidence.[1] He was curt and professional, having little time for casual chatter.[1] He was a workaholic and demanding. He had a good sense of humor.[1] He had great energy and intensity, and “brought enthusiasm to much of what he did”.[1] While curt, he was approachable and sympathetic to student’s problems “was one of the best, if not the best, classroom teachers they had experienced”.[1] He exhibited scientific rigor and precaution by controlling extraneous variables and leaving nothing to chance. Robert S. Daniel described Kellogg as part of “the old school of researchers who did everything they could think of to try to prove that their own hypotheses were wrong before they published results”
What happened to Gua after the experiment?
Gua was returned to the primate center with Robert Yerkes in Florida, where she was the subject of further studies by Yerkes’ wife Ada. The Kelloggs returned to Indiana. Gua died of pneumonia on December 21, 1933, less than a year after she left the Kelloggs’ family and just after turning three years old.
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