The Gorilla Foundation Email Format
Research ServicesUnited States11-50 Employees
The Gorilla Foundation, based in the United States, operates in the Research Services sector with a small to mid-sized team. It pursues interspecies communication and public understanding of great apes, most notably through Project Koko, which involved three lowland gorillas—Koko, Michael, and Ndume—to demonstrate that gorillas can use sign language to express complex thoughts and feelings. The work is intended to foster worldwide empathy for great apes and encourage a closer relationship with nature. Current initiatives include Kids4Koko, a web-based program at koko.org that teaches sign language, painting, reading, and conservation to kids of all ages. It also advances Virtual Sanctuaries, an effort to connect humans with gorillas remotely via video technology while preserving the animals’ privacy and autonomy. A recent development is the foundation’s partnership with Koko Signs to jointly advance sign-language research.