Compassion in
PROJECT NIM
In the documentary Project Nim, Nim was taken out of his natural habitat, away from his family, and displaced several times. In order for the researchers to pull Nim out of his natural habitat they had to tranquilize his mother. In the documentary, a shadowy figure enters the room in which Nim and his mother are kept in. As The figure approaches the cage, Nim’s mother cowers in the corner, holding her baby. A gunshot is heard, followed by screaming from the monkeys and Nim’s mother going limp. The cage is opened, the shadowy figure enters, and tears Nim away from his mother. This beginning scene of Project Nim showed the lack of compassion in the research project.
Soon after Nim was ripped out of his home, he was brought to a family that lived in utter chaos. However, he was being raised as any human newborn would be. He wore clothes, used the bathroom, and communicated with people to signal his intentions. For all Nim knew, he was a human, albeit a hairy one. The viewers are led to believe that Nim was cared for. But while Nim lived with his caretakers, animal testing was conducted; scientists were researching how language developed and whether language barriers could be broken between species. They weren't interested in raising Nim or bringing him into a home to be part of the family, they were self-motivated in their research. Eventually, they put him into a cage to have numerous tests run on him. But, according to one of the doctors in LEMSIP, you can’t “put a chimpanzee, or any animal for that matter, in a cage and run tests on it for months at a time and call it humane”, especially if the animal was raised under the belief that it was human. By moving Nim into the facility, the researchers ultimately showed that they didn't care about Nim, there was no compassion in this relationship. They just wanted to use him for research, and they confined him to a miniscule cage.
Nim was thought to show compassion for the scientists, and vice versa. But from the onset of the documentary, there were hints that the project lacked compassion in its totality. Nim wasn’t compassionate about his caretakers - he only signed for something when it would benefit himself. He wasn’t selfless, and he often melted down when he didn’t get what he wanted. On the other side, the scientists that worked with and on Nim didn’t show signs of compassion towards Nim - they were focused on proving their hypothesis. When having a chimpanzee no longer benefitted them, they immediately sold him to another owner. This lack of compassion led to poor science being conducted, and ultimately a failure of the project.
