The Gorilla Foundation is assembling Koko's vocabulary of over 1000 signs of American Sign Language into a multimedia database called ZEST (Zoo Enrichment Signing Tutorial) that will help researchers, caregivers — and anyone interested — learn sign language, and teach it to other great apes. In particular, this database is accompanied by a built-in tutorial designed to help zoos interested in improving the quality of their great ape care through sign language (as "baby signing" has done for parents with their pre-linguistic children).

The benefits and organization are described in a demo slide show, in the "Learn to Sign with Koko" section of our website. Click here to learn more.

Updates on the development and dissemination of ZEST will be published here and notifications will be emailed via our KokoMail eNewsLetters.

ZEST should be ready for early adopters by early 2007. If you are interested in collaborating with The Gorilla Foundation on ZEST, email zest@Koko.org.