Nadezhda Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kohts was a pioneer in the study of nonhuman animal mind and her research demonstrated that cognition and empathy are non exclusively humans and she provided a method that is still in use in contemporary Psychology. This is her story:

Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts was born in Penza, Russia, on May 18, 1889. Her father was a music teacher and her mum didn’t have any formal education (Seel, 2012). She finished her study of comparative Psychology at Moscow University in 1917 and became head of the Laboratory of Zoopsychology of the Darwin Museum, which had been founded by her husband, the Russian zoologist Alexander F. Kohts ( Van Rosmalen et, al. 2011).

At Darwin Museum she studied the behaviour of monkeys and apes and published her findings in Russian, German and French. However, it was not until 2002 that her book “Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child” edited by Primatologist Frans de Waal was translated to English.

The chimpanzee Joni.

Ladygina-Kohts most famous feat was to raise the baby chimpanzee named Joni for years and compare the observations of his behaviour with those of her own son Rudi. These observations were published in the book “The chimpanzee child and the human child: their instincts, emotions, play habits and expressive movements”

One of the most important things that Ladygina-Kohts discovered during her observations with Joni was the existence of empathy without language. Every day, Ladygina-Kohts had to deal with his unruly behaviour. She found out that the only way to get Joni off the roof of her house was to appeal to his concern for her. In her book, Infant Chimpanzee and Human child, she wrote:

“If I pretend to be crying, close my eyes, and weep, Yoni immediately stops his plays or any other activities, quickly runs over to me, all excited and shagged, from the most remote places in the house, such as the roof or the ceiling of his cage, from where I could not drive him down despite my persistent calls and entreaties. He hastily runs around me, as if looking for the offender, looking at my face, he tenderly takes my chin in his palm, lightly touches my face with his finger, as though trying to understand what is happening” (De Waal, 2005, p.184).

Match-to-Sample Paradigm.

According to American psychologist Robert Yerkes, there is a good chance that Ladygina-Kohts invented the matching-to-sample (MTS) paradigm, which is widely used nowadays to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (De Waal, 2016).

Nadia (diminutive of Nadezhda) would hold up an object for Joni, then hide it among other objects in a sack and let him feel around to find the first one. The test involved two modalities, vision and touch, demanding that Joni make a choice based on his memory of the previously seen model (De Waal, p.97 2016).Interestingly, Ladygina’s studies were not limited to primates but also studied parrots.

In the photo below, which is part of the photographs at the Darwin Museum, we can see Nadia working with a macaw. The parrot sits opposite her on the table, while Ladygina-Kohts held a small food reward in one hand and a pencil in the other, scoring its choices as she tested its ability to discriminate among objects.

A smart strategy against the Lysenkoism. 

Ladygina-Kohts is also a great example of bravery. Because her experiments and her work at Darwin Museum with her husband, they were considered dangerous against the ideas of the most powerful Soviet politicians. Under the  influence of the would-be geneticist Trofim Lysenko (strong proponent of Lamarckism and author of pseudoscientific ideas termed Lysenkoism), Joseph Stalin had many a brilliant Russian biologist either shot or sent to the Gulag for thinking the wrong thoughts.

Lysenko believed that plants and animals pass on traits gained during their lifetime. The names of those who disagreed with him became unmentionable, and entire research institutes were closed down. Lysenko was distinctly ambivalent about Darwin’s theory, some of which he labeled “reactionary”. To stay away of trouble, Nadia and her husband hid documents and data among their taxidermy collection in the museum basement. Then, wisely put a large statue of the French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck at the museum entrance (De Waal, 2016).

Let’s not forget her legacy.

Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts was a pioneer of evolutionary cognition, is much beloved in her country and is widely recognized as the great scientist that she was (De Waal, 2016). However, a lot of people in Western nations studying Psychology still ignore her life and scientific contributions. Was Ladygina-Kohts overlooked by science due to her gender? Or was it her language? Or political censorship?

Frans de Waal, learnt about her by Robert Yerkes’ books, and I learnt about her by de Waal’s literature. As an interesting fact, Nadezhda is a Slavic name which means “Hope”. Therefore, regardless of the reasons of why her name is not well known in most Western faculties of Psychology, I hope with this article I can stimulate the curiosity of readers so they can learn more about the contributions of Ladygina-Kohts and give her the recognition that she deserves as a brave and brilliant scientist.

Update (June 2026): Ethical reflections on Ladygina-Kohts’ research.

In November 2023, during the first semester of my Master’s degree in Primatology, I presented a poster on Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts’ work with Joni at the University of Aguascalientes, Mexico, during the annual international meeting of Comparative Psychology. The response from students and researchers was overwhelmingly positive and sparked many engaging discussions.

One question, however, was raised repeatedly: Was Ladygina-Kohts’ research ethical?

My answer is straightforward: according to modern ethical standards, probably not. However, it is important to consider the historical context in which her work was conducted. During the early twentieth century, many scientific practices that would now be considered unacceptable were common across various disciplines. For example, ornithologists routinely collected specimens by shooting birds in order to study and classify them.

Bringing a young chimpanzee to live in a Moscow household undoubtedly posed risks and would be regarded as ethically problematic today. Nevertheless, Ladygina-Kohts’ research provided some of the earliest and most detailed observations of the cognitive and emotional capacities of a non-human primate. Her work contributed to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that humans are not unique in possessing complex cognition, emotional sensitivity, and the capacity for empathy.

Today, in 2026, most scientists would agree that raising a chimpanzee in a human household for cognitive research would be highly unethical. Yet the scientific record suggests that Ladygina-Kohts’ pioneering studies played an important role in the development of Comparative Psychology, animal cognition, and behavioural science. At a time when Psychology and Ethology were still emerging as scientific disciplines, her observations helped challenge anthropocentric assumptions about animal minds.

Although her methods can be criticized from a modern ethical perspective, her contributions to science remain significant. Her work helped lay the foundations for our current understanding of animal cognition and empathy, knowledge that continues to support conservation efforts and to foster greater appreciation of the rich mental lives of non-human animals.

Article originally published on lsapienslara.com on 18 May 2021.

References.

De Waal, F. (2016). Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?. W.W. Norton & Company.

De Waal, F. (2005) Our Inner Ape. Penguin Group.

Kohts, A.F. (1914) Ladygina-Kohts with chimpanzee Joni. [Photograph], Collections of the State Darwin Museum. http://foundations.nathist.ru/node/144678

Moscow Mayor Official website. (May, 2020). Meet Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts: The first woman to study animal Psychology. https://www.mos.ru/en/news/item/74118073/

Najas (2011). Надежда Ладыгина-Котс и шимпанзе Иони (Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts and the chimpanzee Joni) dreamwidth.org [Blog]. https://najas.dreamwidth.org/266165.html

Penza Oceanarium (2019). ФЛЭШМОБ К 130-ЛЕТНЕМУ ЮБИЛЕЮ НАДЕЖДЫ НИКОЛАЕВНЫ ЛАДЫГИНОЙ-КОТС. (Flashmob to the 130th anniversary of Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts) http://oceanpenza.ru/2019/05/12/513/

Romanovna, O. (n/d). Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts, the first Russian primatologist. antropogenez.ru. https://antropogenez.ru/article/1140/

Scientificrussia (2014) Думают ли животные? (Do animals think?). Scientificrussia.ru https://scientificrussia.ru/articles/copy-of-dumayut-li-zhivotnye

Seel, M. (2012). Encyclopedia of the sciences of learning. Springer US Publishing.

Timofeev, D. (2016, January 10) Опыты с шимпанзе, работы Надежды Николаевны Ладыгиной-Котс (Experiments with chimpanzees, works by Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts) [YouTube Video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKPuotJLvEo

Van Rosmelen, L., Van der Horst, F,. Van der Veer, R. (2011). An unexpected admirer of Ladygina-Kohts. History of Psychology, Vol.14. American Psychological Association.