If Jane Goodall is the most famous primate researcher, then Sue Savage-Rumbaugh may be the second.  The reason for her fame is the amazing ability of her constant companion for the past two decades, a pygmy chimp, or bonobo, named Kanzi.  Celebrities of the zoology world, Kanzi and his fellow apes at the Iowa Ape Sanctuary spend their days as the subject of species-blurring research into the human and animal minds.

The field of primate study attracts a wide variety of scholars from vastly different disciplines, including linguists like MIT’s Noam Chomsky, who stated in the 1970s that animals showed no ability to use grammar, and therefore, no ability to understand language.  Paleolithic archaeologists like Berkeley’s Nick Toth are attracted to Kanzi because he shows an ability to make primitive stone blades from rocks.  And bioethicists like Princeton’s Peter Singer see Kanzi as the point of transfer from nature to man, and regard him (and other bonobos) as deserving of basic human rights, a status he calls “personhood.”

These debates are either too complicated or lacking in importance to Kanzi.  When he talks, he spends most of his time asking for hugs or M&Ms.

Still, there is something amazing about Kanzi, something that manifests itself in his eyes when he is in the middle of reasoning.  In a video shown in my zoology class, one does not see the cute gorilla, Koko, with her kitten, but instead the precocious Kanzi, a creature with frighteningly human abilities.

“Kanzi,” Sue says, “we’re going for a picnic. Please pick up the basket.”

Kanzi gives the American Sign Language symbol for “okay,” and slips the basket, full of fruits and breads, into his long hairy arms.  In the wild, bonobos walk upright about 25% of the time, but Kanzi now walks like a human more naturally than he does on all fours.

 “Let’s start a fire,” Sue says. “Please gather some sticks.” 

Kanzi nods emphatically, and rushes into the underbrush.  In comprehending Sue’s grammar, and in his ability to predict that the sticks will be used to make fire, Kanzi is at the height of his abilities.  To see him bound through the forest, gathering long, slender sticks, one would guess that he enjoys performing at this limit of his mind.

“There is paper to start the fire in my back left pocket.”

Kanzi approaches Sue, who stands motionless.  He moves around behind her and slips his hand into her jeans.

“Shred the paper, Kanzi” Sue says.

Again, the symbol for “okay.”

Kanzi tears the pages and sets them under the kindling he’s collected.

“There is a lighter in my back right pocket,” Sue says.

Removing the lighter, Kanzi rolls the flint wheel with the proficiency of a heavy smoker and stares momentarily at the flame.  His eyes glow with delectation at its potential.

“C’mon Kanzi,” Sue implores.

He follows her direction and lights the tinder.  Soon, smoke marionettes in the wind and the forest is silent.  All about them is either blue sky or the silhouette of trees, and the camera pans away to reveal Sue removing bread from the basket, and Kanzi clapping his hands.  He smiles broadly, though in nature this would be considered a signal of aggression.

Other videos on the Iowa Ape Sanctuary’s website show Kanzi using a keyboard of over 400 lexigrams to communicate his desires and thoughts.  One video shows Kanzi playing his favorite game, Ms. Pacman; he yelps softly when he eats a large dot rendering the ghosts and edible blue, and pursues them with determination.  In a final clip, to prove Kanzi’s ability to understand grammar and sounds, Sue puts a welder’s mask over her face and gives Kanzi directions on what to do with the twenty or so objects she’s placed before him.

“Put the pine needles in the refrigerator” she entreats.  He does so.

“Cut the onions with the knife.” 

Wielding the foot long blade, Kanzi slices his favorite food.

To Kanzi, all of this talking must seem useless.

In bonobo communities in the wild, every day is a massive orgy of sexual gesture.  The bonds of family and friendship aren’t solidified through sign language and picture keyboards, but through sexual communion.  Females rub against females—fathers against sons.  Sometimes referred to by primatologists as the “hippie apes,” bonobos practice free love in their small communities in Rwanda and the Congo.

Life is not perfect there, however.  Peter Singer’s move to grant bonobos “personhood” had the motive of stopping their slaughter; soldiers kill bonobos for use as bushmeat.  One of the most endangered of all great apes (though all great ape species are endangered), bonobos straddle the border of two countries at war with each other and themselves.  Their shrinking numbers mean that within twenty years, primatologists will lose natural communities of humanity’s closest living relative, a creature with whom we share more than 98% of our DNA.

In Kanzi’s favorite movie, 1968’s Planet of the Apes, his species rules a world where humans are pushed to the margins, a world where Charlton Heston is the ape under scrutiny, and the only human who can speak amongst the literate monkeys.  The plot twist in the movie’s final moments has become a part of pop culture: realizing that human civilization destroyed itself in nuclear war, the astronaut George Taylor pounds his fists into the sand and yells, “You maniacs.  You blew it up.  Damn you.  Damn you all to Hell!"  Humanity’s absence on Earth made room for the apes in the movie to ascend the ranks of the mind.

With the present rate of endangerment, a slope that ends with extinction, the plausibility of the movie’s conclusion comes more and more into question.  A more believable scenario sees nobody standing on the beach at the base of the ruined Statue of Liberty.

Despite Kanzi’s curiosity, despite his gentleness and glowing eyes, it becomes more likely every day that mankind will take bonobos with us into the abyss.

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Ryan Shannon is a senior double-majoring in zoology and English at MSU. This is his second appearance in EJ. Reach Ryan at shanno38@msu.edu.