Nick Pyenson

I took her out to California, and then one night, Lily had to be moved to the wildlife waste station, and a caretaker did not lock her up one night when it was freezing, and Lily froze to death.

I was devastated.

She's like my daughter and my lifetime work.

I mean, my life centered around her.

I just think of that baby in Lily's arms and sad that Bob and I were not able to be a part of her life or grow up as Lily did or be with her parents.

I had heard through the primate grapevine that the Columbus Zoo now had a PR chimpanzee, a baby chimp that the director of the zoo was taking around on his PR visits here and there around the city.

The director was being bitten by Sheba.

Then, of course, I got the telephone call.

Could she come and join our project?

And she did.

They are a fascinating species in their own right, and anything we learned about them could only, I hoped, would eventually benefit them in captivity.

The idea being that if we showed how similar they were and how much they empathized, how much they could communicate, how intelligent they were, that we would begin to slowly change the consciousness of the country in terms of what we did with them in terms of biomedical research.

Sheba was about two years old when she came to the project.

Compared to other chimps that I've worked with, Sheba was above average intelligence, I think.

And this is going to be very subjective.

And I think every human mother probably goes through this as well.

There's a point where your child...

sort of becomes an individual.

And I got that sense from the chimps as well.

They had their own ideas about things.