Koko The Gorilla Mourning The Loss Of Robin Williams

[tblue37]

17. Nonsense. KoKo understands quite a lot--but

not at the level of an adult human. Would you wake up a 3 or 4 year old child who has no real comprehension of who Robin Williams was and tell her, with a sad, sad face, that we have lost someone precious?

The child would probably not understand who or what was lost, but your sadness and your words would cue sadness for the child and make her feel a sense of free-floating grief that has nothing to attach to. She would be stressed and sad for no useful purpose.

I know that some people actually do that sort of thing--tell their little kid something sad that would not otherwise even be on the kid's radar, and then videotape the kid's sad reaction to post on FB to prove how cute and sensitive the kid is.

That is what this strikes me as.

Furthermore, the whole point of his doing this was to promote his own (sentimental) public image, not to offer any sort of identifiable benefit to KoKo.

What benefit does KoKo get from being unnecessarily prompted to feel sad about someone who probably is not really even on her radar?