Kanzi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kanzi (born October 23, 1980), is a male bonobo ape, and one of the most famous and accomplished linguistic apes, in research led by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.^[1]^[2]

Born to Lorel and Bosandjo at Yerkes field station at Georgia State University, Kanzi was stolen and adopted shortly after birth by a more dominant female, Matata. As an infant, Kanzi accompanied his mother to sessions where she was taught language through keyboard lexigrams, but showed little interest in the lessons.

It was a great surprise to researchers then when one day, while Matata was away, Kanzi began competently using the lexigrams, becoming not only the first observed ape to have learned aspects of language naturalistically rather than through direct training, but also the first observed bonobo to appear to use some elements of language at all.^[1]^[2] Within a short time, Kanzi had mastered the ten words that researchers had been struggling to teach his adoptive mother, and he has since learned more than two hundred more. According to Smithsonian Magazine, November 2006, Kanzi by now has learned 348 lexigrams, and understands over 3000 spoken English words. When he hears a spoken word (through headphones, to filter out nonverbal clues), he points to the correct lexigram.

Also notable are Kanzi's ability to understand aspects of spoken language and associate it with lexigrams, his ability to understand simple grammatical sentences, and possibly his invention of novel vocalized words.^[1]^[2] Kanzi has also demonstrated the ability to play simple video games, such as Ms. Pac-Man.^[3] Kanzi is also a far more accomplished tool user and inventor than almost all other apes known to humankind.^[4]

Kanzi is Panbanisha's brother. Kanzi, his mother, brother, and sister now live at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, the only primate research center in the world dedicated to studying cognitive skills of all four types of non-human great apes. Kanzi is the Alpha Male - the undisputed leader of the resident community of Bonobos.

[edit] Kanzi and the Marshmallows

In an outing in the Georgia woods, Kanzi touched the symbols for "marshmallows" and "fire." "Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick." (Anecdote told by Savage-Rumbaugh to Paul Raffaele, published in Smithsonian magazine, November 2006.)

[edit] Kanzi and the Maori War Dance

Paul Raffaele, at Savage-Rumbaugh's request, performed a Maori War Dance for the Bonobos. This dance includes thigh-slapping, chest-thumping, and hollering. Almost all the Bonobos present interpreted this as an aggressive display, and reacted with loud screams, tooth-baring, and pounding the walls and floor. All but Kanzi, who remained perfectly calm, and conveyed in Bonobo language (interpreted by Savage-Rumbaugh to Raffaele) that he knew that no threat was meant, but that the performance should be apart from the other Bonobos so as not to upset them. So a private performance in another room was succesfully, peacefully and happily carried out. (Smithsonian, November 2006).

[edit] Kanzi's appearance

According to Raffaele, Kanzi "has the mien of an aging patriarch - he's balding and paunchy with serious, deep-set eyes." (Smithsonian, November 2006). Like all Bonobos, he has longish black hair and a black face, and looks remarkably like an Australopithecus.

[edit] Disambiguation

Kanzi is also the Kunrei-shiki spelling of Kanji, which are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c Savage-Rumbaugh S, & Lewin R, 1994
^ ^a ^b ^c Mitani, J. 1995.
^ [1]
^ See September 1994 issue of Discover article, "Ape at the Brink".

[edit] References & bibliography

Savage-Rumbaugh S, & Lewin R, (1994) "Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind", Wiley, ISBN 0-471-58591-2.
Mitani, J. (1995). "Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind" (a review of Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin), Scientific American, Volume 272, Number 6.
de Waal, Frans (2005). Our Inner Ape, ISBN 1-57322-312-3.
Raffaele, Paul (2006), "The Smart and Swinging Bonobo", Smithsonian, Volume 37, Number 8 (November 2006).