Tara Stoinski

Yeah, like she was kind of raised almost like a human child.

Oh, got it.

So it was a lot of studies in the 70s that were interested in seeing how much did apes really understand language, even though they can't verbally make language the way we can.

How much do they understand it?

Uh-huh.

All very similar to us.

I think their sense of smell.

I don't know that anyone's tested it.

I get the sense that their sense of smell is maybe it's still a little bit better than ours.

But yeah, very visual.

They seem taller.

They're not like those birds that when we look at them, they're brown.

And when they look at each other, they have like a huge red spot on them that we can't see, which I think is so cool.

Yeah, huge part of the conservation success story.

So I think there's 13 different types of great apes when you look at species and subspecies, not including us.

And they are all declining except for mountain gorillas.

They're the only ones on the planet that are increasing in number.

Now, at the species level, they're still critically endangered.

which means that's one level before extinct in the wild.

So very at risk, very much need support.