Lucy Temerlin (1964–1987) was a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma, and raised by Maurice K. Temerlin, Ph.D., a psychotherapist and professor at the University of Oklahoma and his wife, Jane W. Temerlin.

Temerlin and his wife raised Lucy as if she were a human child, teaching her to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. She was taught American Sign Language by primatologist Roger Fouts as part of an ape language project and eventually learned 140 signs. She appeared in Life magazine, where she became famous for drinking straight gin, rearing a cat, and using Playgirl and a vacuum cleaner for sexual gratification.

Fouts has written that he would arrive at Lucy's home at 8:30 every morning, when Lucy would greet him with a hug, take the kettle, fill it with water, find two cups and tea bags, and brew and serve the tea. By the time she was 12, accompanied by University of Oklahoma psychology graduate student Janis Carter, she was shipped to a chimpanzee rehabilitation center in Gambia,. Lucy's caretaker claims that she was shot and skinned by a poacher, and that her feet and hands were hacked off for sale as trophies..However, this is disputed by others who were intimately involved in the rehabilitation because the skeleton, in its advanced state of decomposition, could not provide evidence of poaching over some other cause of death.

Lucy was observed lying; something that was once considered uniquely human, because it is evidence of a sense of self. In this sign-language conversation, Fouts asks Lucy about a pile of chimpanzee feces on the floor:

Similar to 0 things you like: