1998: Koko the gorilla, student of American Sign Language and surrogate mother to orphaned kittens, holds the first-known live, interspecies internet chat.America Online, then the gorilla of internet service providers, got plenty of mileage out of the stunt. It didn’t hurt Koko’s benefactor, the Gorilla Foundation, either, which saw the publicity as an opportunity to call attention to the plight of man’s closest relative.Koko, a lowland gorilla who has lived in captivity her entire life, has been the face of the Gorilla Foundation for over 30 years. She was taught American Sign Language in her infancy by her trainer, Penny Patterson, making her one of the few (but not the only) primates capable of communicating, albeit in a very simplified form, with humans.