Firsov's laboratory
In 1972, one of the wooded islands of the lake in the Pustoshkinsky district of the Pskov region became the site for a unique scientific experiment that lasted until 1986.
It was conducted by a group of scientists from the Institute of Physiology named after I.P.
Pavlov Academy of Sciences of the USSR, headed by Doctor of Medical Sciences, primatologist Leonid Firsov.
Five great apes were released into the climatic conditions of the middle zone for several years in a row from the end of June to the beginning of September.
The purpose of the experiment was a systematic study of all aspects of the behavior and psyche of monkeys.
Before the eyes of scientists, a herd of monkeys gradually took shape from laboratory recluses.
Despite the fact that the island had a geographical name, everyone, including the locals, began to call it Monkey.
According to the stories of Irina Bogacheva, researcher at the Institute of Physiology.
I.P. Pavlova, Firsov’s laboratory, with which she collaborated freelance, was located in a detached house: monkeys were kept on the first floor, on the second floor there were offices for employees, including Professor Firsov’s office.
The scientist always welcomed people who showed interest in his work and carried them away with his energy.
Together with Alexander Chizhenkov, who had been freelance for many years, they wrote several books.
The laboratory was exemplary, everything was in order, continues Irina Bogacheva.
“It was felt that everything was being done to make the monkeys live well, they were well fed, promptly provided medical care, cubs were born, which was a very big achievement,” she told RT.
“The cleanliness was very monitored, at the entrance to the laboratory it was necessary to change street shoes and put on a white coat, snow-white coats were also always prepared for guests.”
Leonid Firsov, MD, head of the primate physiology and behavior group at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology, conducts an experiment with chimpanzees
RIA News
© M. Lemikhin
Firsov treated monkeys as individuals, recalls a researcher at the Institute of Physiology.
IP Pavlova: “He could talk about them endlessly.
He was interested in various aspects of their behavior: relationships in the group, problems of hierarchy, leadership, which is most interesting to study in natural conditions, and even creativity - the monkeys were given paints and they drew pictures.
The cubs were very similar in their behavior to children.
They clung to the experimenter, hugged his neck, apparently, felt a completely human attitude towards them.
According to Irina Bogacheva, Leonid Firsov was a wonderful organizer, absolutely dedicated to his work: “Without this, Operation Monkey Island would never have taken place.
It was by no means an easy matter.
It was necessary to achieve permission at different levels, to select people who were ready to work for a long time in the field far from home, to solve a huge number of technical and financial issues.”
© Photo from the personal archive of Alevtina Smirnova
"Laboratory Double of Man"
Leonid Firsov created a comprehensive description of the higher nervous activity of primates.
The fact is that at that time the science of studying the intelligence of animals - cognitive ethology, had not yet taken shape in an independent direction.
And with his research, Firsov anticipated its appearance, scientific approaches and methods of this discipline.
Leonid Firsov set tasks for chimpanzees that had previously been done only in the laboratory, and tested how they would be solved by animals in natural conditions.
So, for example, the chimpanzee Boy, with the help of a stick, managed to get to an orange, located far from the shore.
At the same time, Firsov noted that the primacy did not take the first stick that came across, but the one that, in his opinion, had certain advantages over others.
“By the end of the third expedition, the community of five chimpanzees, under the leadership of Boy, reached the greatest coherence. It was at this time that the “darkest” days in our work came, since we could not turn away from our belongings, protocol notebooks, clothes and equipment for a second. Greedy eyes noted our every mistake. The monkeys learned to hide so skillfully that the stolen thing could safely be entered on the list of the missing
.
From the book of L.A. Firsov "The behavior of anthropoids in natural conditions."
Books by Leonid Firsov from the collection of the RSL.
RT
© RT
The life of chimpanzees in the conditions of the North-West of Russia had little resemblance to their life in Africa, from where they all arrived at different ages.
The experiment was supposed to answer the main question: will the monkeys survive in these climatic conditions, complicated by the unusually rainy and cold summer of 1974.
However, it turned out that many previously unshakable information about these animals turned out to be incorrect and were revised.
Among other things, the unique ability of chimpanzees to avoid obviously poisonous plants was discovered.
In total, there were 180 different types of different plants on the island, and almost half of them were recognized by the monkeys as edible, unmistakably distinguishing useful from poisonous.
Despite the fact that there were 15 species of herbs dangerous for chimpanzees on the island, and all of them were not similar to African ones, not a single monkey even tried them, showing a great instinct.
This ability of theirs has remained unexplored.
Laboratory assistant at the Institute of Physiology.
Pavlova Alevtina Smirnova with baby chimpanzees during an experiment on the island.
© Photo from personal archive
Among scientists who were familiar with Firsov's activities, there was an opinion that partly this experiment had a defensive focus - to study how it is possible to distinguish between edible and inedible in unfamiliar field conditions without laboratory tests.
The fact is that during the Vietnam War, the American military, forced to survive in the jungle without army support, often received serious poisoning from unfamiliar plants that they ate.
By the way, in the summer of 1971, American scientists from the York Primatological Center tried to conduct a similar experiment by releasing four chimpanzees in the state of Georgia.
And although the climate there was much milder than Pskov, two monkeys died, and the experiment had to be stopped.
Leonid Firsov often repeated: "The chimpanzee is the laboratory double of man."
He explained this by the fact that "the cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory and other systems - they exactly correspond to ours."
He believed that all this could not have arisen from scratch, that the ability to use tools probably appeared long before man.
The scientist wanted to find that point in evolution, where the paths of man and monkey separated.
In the laboratory of the Institute of Physiology.
Pavlova.
© Photo from the personal archive of Alevtina Smirnova
"Shaggy Robinsons"
As Firsov himself wrote, the expedition personnel were conditionally divided into three groups: physiologists, cinematographers and helpers.
To strengthen individual sections, a mathematician and a botanist participated in the experiment.
The film observations that scientists made of the monkeys formed the basis of the documentary film, which was called “Monkey Island”, and its main characters were the chimpanzee Boy, who was eight years old, Taras, six years old, seven-year-old Gamma, four-year-old Silva and the youngest Chita - she was three years old.
Natalia Gusakova.
Preparation for the experiment.
© Photo from personal archive
The host of the program “In the World of Animals” Nikolai Drozdov, in an interview with RT, recalls that on television this topic was led by his senior fellow broadcaster Vasily Peskov: “He shared a story about how he drove up to the island on a boat with an operator, and there a whole group of monkeys was waiting for them .
Among them was the leader, leading and protecting the rest of the chimpanzees.
He rushed at them, jumped onto the boat, and they lost their balance and turned it over.
All the cameras got wet."
“The shaggy Robinsons have become the real masters of their island. They jealously protect him from visiting strangers. Once, as an experiment, a scuba diver was sent to the island. The monkeys raised a cry, threw stones at the stranger unknown to them until they drove it away.
From the article "Monkeys live ... in the Pskov region" in the newspaper "Pskovskaya Pravda" 08/24/1974, authors - M. Amaev, A. Ronin.
Alevtina Smirnova with chimpanzee cubs in the laboratory.
© Photo from personal archive
Monkey "kindergarten"
Alevtina Smirnova, as a laboratory assistant, joined the group of scientists who participated in the experiment in 1977, when she came to work with chimpanzees at the Institute of Physiology.
Pavlova.
She went on an expedition to Monkey Island with her wards in 1980.
What were your daily duties on the island?
“We took care of the cubs.
Our laboratory was not closed day or night.
When the monkeys were born, we all took turns on duty near them, spent the night with them: me, Natalya Gusakova, Ekaterina Myacheva, Elena Semyonova, and researcher Vladimir Plotnikov.
On the island in 1980, under our supervision, a group of baby chimpanzees was released, as we called it - "kindergarten".
These were the cubs that were born in captivity: Boy, Lel, Genghis, Tom, Pegasus and Malysh.
For them, a tent and a cage were set up there, where they spent the night.
Since they were small, we cooked porridge for them, walked with them.
They, like children, always tried to walk in pairs or with a cloth.
The rag for them was like a mother: they would take it and drag it along.
In addition to those chimpanzees that were on the island, Nika, Sandi and Styopa also lived in the laboratory.
Leonid Firsov's son Sergey at the age of 3 with a four-year-old chimpanzee Lada / A baby chimpanzee with a toy.
© Photo from the newspaper / From the personal archive
Our monkeys grew up better than some children were brought up.
My daughter Evgenia also grew up with monkeys.
I had to take it to work with me.
There she spent a lot of time among the chimpanzees.
And Genghis, who was born from Gamma - from the first group of chimpanzees sent to the island, grew up separately, spent a lot of time in Firsov's apartment, and was even brought up with his son Sergei.
What did the chimpanzees eat on the island?
- Basically, on the island, they ate wild herbs and berries.
From the same bird cherry, berries were eaten even green.
However, they did not have any diarrhea or other disorders.
Birds also lived on the island.
Chimpanzees ate bird eggs.
And they were very fond of the fruits that we treated them to: bananas, apples, oranges.
A lot of attention was riveted to the experiment. Who came to you for experience?
- From different countries, mostly, of course, socialist.
I remember that scientists from Czechoslovakia were very interested.
Firsov had many envious people.
They "helped" knock him out of the institute.
Such an interesting and popular experiment had to be curtailed.
Chimpanzee during the experiment
RIA News
© M. Lemikhin
Why did Leonid Firsov stop his research?
- Firsov was forced to leave the institute in 1986 because his own graduate student wrote a denunciation of him.
Then there were times when alcohol, which was allocated for the needs of the laboratory, was also used as a means of payment in solving the pressing issues of the functioning of the laboratory.
There was a lack of alcohol.
From the article “A serf scientist?”, Published in Izvestia in 1986: “An investigation has begun. First one employee, then another was called to the directorate (...) The absurdity was that it was required to indicate the expenses and waste for the last seven years of work. On the basis of the memoirs of the laboratory assistants and the figures arbitrarily named by them, an official act on the revision was drawn up (...) These mythical figures gave rise to the arrest of the head.
Then the case was dropped.
No corpus delicti was found.
Violation of job descriptions was minimal.
But he did not return to the leadership of the laboratory.
Although he published several other scientific papers.
- After Firsov left, how long did you work with monkeys?
“After he left, the work with chimpanzees quickly faded away.
When Firsov was removed, a new manager came.
He could not work the way Leonid Aleksandrovich worked, who felt the monkeys very well and had close contact with them: he entered the cage, looked after them.
He and Natalya Gusakova managed them very skillfully, they somehow kept them.
And this is a very difficult animal.
I could enter the chimpanzees only with them.
Natalia Gusakova examines a female chimpanzee.
© Photo from personal archive
If the monkeys fell ill, then he was always in the hospital, then he invited a specialist doctor to us.
When Gamma and Silva gave birth, the leading neonatologist Ariadna Ketlinskaya came to us and examined the pregnant chimpanzees.
Firsov made sure that she was not bitten when she touched her tummy.
And pediatrician Valentina Medinskaya led our newborn chimpanzees.
They both worked at the Otto Institute.
We also went there for women's breast milk, which was given to us to feed our wards.
Why didn't their mothers feed them?
“Even before I came to the lab, they had a bad experience.
The first baby chimpanzee born in the laboratory was left with the female, but it all ended badly, he died.
And then, in order not to risk it, they decided to take the babies away from the monkeys after childbirth and raise them as artificial ones.
The babies were treated with human interferon.
They got it at the Pasteur Institute, with which they also collaborated closely.
Chimpanzee cubs from the laboratory of the Institute of Physiology.
Pavlova.
© Photo from the personal archive of Alevtina Smirnova
- You must have been very attached to each other?
- Of course.
And we got used to it.
And they already understood us.
At first they were like babies in diapers.
Then we sewed panties for them, and they walked in them.
And on the island we watched them, first of all, for warmth.
If it was cold, they burned firewood, collected hot coals, put them next to their dwelling so that the children would be warm.
And the big chimpanzees lived freely on the island.
And although a booth was set up for them as a shelter in case of rains, they never went there.
They made nests for themselves.
The first, as Leonid Alexandrovich said, was the smallest Chita.
Basically, they preferred places where bird cherry grew.
It seems like there are fewer mosquitoes.
Then these nests were cut down and studied, they stood in our laboratory.
But with the departure of Firsov, everything scattered somewhere.
And the monkeys themselves were gone.
Some died, others we had to sell.
I remember that I personally took two to Kyiv.
Two were sent to Kaliningrad.
A group of scientists and local residents during an experiment with chimpanzees on Lake Yazno.
Pskov region, Pustoshkinsky district.
© Photo from the personal archive of Alevtina Smirnova