Chilling photos show a tiny little baby being raised alongside a chimp in a warped experiment. One haunting image even shows the tot in floods of tears after being spun about in his chair again and again. It is now approaching 93 years since the study was abruptly terminated in the early part of 1932 – and below we take a closer look at the disturbing tests that ultimately ended in tragedy.
It was June 26, 1931, when Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife Luella welcomed a fourth member to their family. They already had a little boy called Donald but they wanted him to have a “sibling” – and this is where a baby chimpanzee called Gua came into the picture.
Being animal psychologists, they thought it would be interesting to raise Gua alongside Donald to see how “human” they could make it. But despite their intention, it was Donald who “became more ape than human” and the experiment had to be cut short.
The experiment was supposed to take place over a five-year period. It started when Donald was seven months old while Gua was 10 months. However, it only lasted nine months, and the parents began to fear the worst when little Donald began biting, crawling like a chimp and grunting when he was hungry.
This was after the comparative psychologists made Donald sleep in a similar bed to the chimp. The “brother and sister” were also spoken to in the same way and similar rules applied when it came to clothing, toys and punishments. One haunting picture even showed Donald screaming out after his rotating chair was repeatedly spun in one alarming test.
