The true story of Lucy, the chimp who could sign language. That's pretty much Tarzan in reverse.
She had been born in the carnival, and sold less than 48 hours after. A contract with an agreement that Lucy – as she became known - would be handed back at the end of the research period. [This reads more like a lease arrangement than a sale.] The transaction was approved. Her owner is said to have acknowledged selling her to a researcher in the Institute of Primate Studies, Oklahoma, USA. A number of scientists of various disciplines would become familiar with Lucy but none more so than Maurice Temerlin, an American psychotherapist, who with his wife, Jane, raised her as a human daughter – except that in reality Lucy was the subject of Temerlin’s long-term research project.
Maurice Temerlin and Janis Carter taught her to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. She would often greet them with tea. The most impressive of all was Lucy was taught by her 'master' Jane Carter signs taken from 'American Sign Language by primatologist Roger Fouts' as part of an ape language project and eventually learned how to do 140 signs.
She settled into human life alright up until she was age 12. Apparently she started to become temperamental and became destructive in the Temerlin house.
When she was shipped away for rehabilitation with both following suit to keep an eye on her. They were promised she would live in-between for awhile, having the human luxuries that she was accustomed to her whole life, and then move to a small island to live on with another female chimp and two males. The head of the dept Stella Brewer was waiting for their arrival, she had arranged the living arrangements for Lucy. Janis Carter shortly after arrival started to push for Lucy to be in the rehabilitation center with the other chimps, instead of outdoors. Bizarre.
Lucy wasn't attracted to other apes, she found humans attractive conditioning I suppose (perhaps conflict/jealousy arose?) and she had a hard time spending time with the wild apes, because not only did they frighten her but they didn't accept her, and she didn't want to be in there. There had been notes shared after Lucy's mysterious death that Lucy had signed to Carter that she wanted to go home repeatably. Carter being the only person who knew what she was signing, because she was the one who taught her it. Cold, heartless.
A year had passed where Lucy had apparently lived with the apes without distress and when the researchers returned to look for her, they had found her decomposing carcass. Janis Carter was the first person to find her carcass 2-3 weeks old under leaves. The condition wasn't pretty: *‘…her hands and feet brutally [our emphasis] severed and her skin simply stripped off…’ He certainly quotes Carter in ‘…We can only speculate that Lucy was killed – probably shot – and skinned...’ *
source: Lucy's Death source: Lucy's PG story)
So yeah, languages can be exchanged to a certain degree, so long as both parties are patient. Which is a massive bloody ask in this day and age. Tarzan's moment of unity was they both have heartbeats that beat alike. I vaguely remember the mother catching him when he was pretending to swing like everyone else was. Their connection was what got him some face-boob; Reusing it on Jane you sly dog. His language between the apes were just grunts, with extended grunts and guttural noises, few vowels in there to be classy. Oo Oo Aa Ae Eee ~ pretty sure that's the line he taught Jane.