The Death of a Signing Chimpanzee: An Excercise in Anthropomorphising

In response to: An African chimpanzee and its language of signs (http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/02/stories/2007110257872200.htm)

Washoe, a chimpanzee who learned over 250 words in American Sign Language, died last Tuesday. Some scientists considered her to be the first nonhuman to acquire human language. But is 250 signs enough to count as language? Even tame estimates of the number of words used by the average English speaker places them in the thousands.
Not to mention, Washoe's use of language appeared to be limitted to single words used to identify something she wanted or to gain a reward. The examples cited on the web page clearly lacked Chomsky-an recursion in her signing. There was no indication she had the ability to string her signs into longer sentences for what could be called language.
Clear examples of her linguistic shortcomings can be found in any of the History and Timeline section of FriendsofWashoe.org.
Looking specifically at the entry Washoe Gives Birth to Sequoyah (http://www.friendsofwashoe.org/timeline_sequoyah_birth_and_death.shtml), the many instances where Washoe's 'language' fail are glaring. The narrator is still using treats when he goes for a walk with her in the woods. More notably, when he has to communicate with her about her baby, whether it be getting permission to take it away, or getting her to return it, he is limmitted to knocking Washoe out, or using tootsie pops to reach his goal. It appears much more like he mastered interaction with Chimpanzee's on their terms, rather than the team successfully managing to establish communication on the level of human language.
It seems each point along this timeline suffers from anthropomorphising, as the observers project human emotions and the language that comes with them onto the subjects they were studying. It comes as a natural consequence to assuming she has language. How could something that communicates like a human, not feel like a human?
This mistake is a greater misstep than past occurences of invading cultures evaluating local customs through the lens of what they consider civilized. There is no common basis to assume we understand an animal's thought process, and to project human interaction onto them is a mistake. That is not to say that animals do not have 'emotion' (I use the term loosely here due to it's largely human connotation.) but to assume they model Human feelings, when our reactions vary greatly culture to culture, there is clearly no basis for species to species correlation.