Lucy was adopted in 1964 by Maurice and Jane Temerlin when she was just two days old. Maurice, a psychotherapist, was intrigued with the question of precisely how human-like a chimpanzee could be if she was raised in the right environment. Lucy was raised as if she were a human child, learning to hold her own bottle, dress herself, and use proper utensils at the dinner table. The Temerlins hired a sign-language instructor to teach Lucy how to communicate with her family, eventually learning over 140 signs. Lucy became even more human-like as she grew up, drinking gin and reading books, and making tea for guests when her family entertained. When Lucy was introduced to a male chimpanzee for the first time, she was frightened of him and did not relate to him at all. This illustrated how detached Lucy was from her ape origins. When she reached the age of 12, she had become too strong and violent for the Temerlins to continue to care for Lucy in their home, so they sent her to a chimpanzee rehabilitation center in Gambia, Africa with a graduate student named Janis Carter. Janis cared for Lucy in Africa and took Lucy and other chimpanzees who were having trouble acclimating to the wild to a secluded island in a river to help them become accustomed to their environment. Lucy struggled for a long time accepting that her life as a human child was now over, but eventually, she learned to live as her own kind. A year after Janis left, she returned to the island with some of Lucy's old belongings. Lucy embraced her and one of Janice's traveling companions captured an image of the hug. Janice returned one year later to find that Lucy had been killed, presumably by a poacher. They found that her remains were free of skin and hair as well as hands and feet, suggesting that she had been skinned and her limbs were taken as a prize.
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| Lucy and Janice embracing in Africa |
