Mr. William M. Fields Scientist, Director of Bonobo Research Institute or University Great Ape Trust of Iowa

Great Ape Trust Research Program

An ethnographer, Mr. Fields is one of only two scientists in the world studying the acquistion of language and culture with bonobos. He joined Great Ape Trust of Iowa in August 2005 after having worked with its bonobo colony at the Language Research Center (LRC) at Georgia State University, where he co-reared the baby bonobo Nyota with Panbanisha, Kanzi and Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.

Mr. Fields oversees the noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of the cognitive and communicative capabilities of Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota. Information developed at the LRC regarding the abilities of non-human primates to acquire symbols, comprehend spoken words, decode simple syntactical structures, learn concepts of number and quantity, and perform complex perceptual-motor tasks has helped change the way humans view other members of the primate order. His current focus of research is to determine how many words Kanzi knows that are not based in lexigrams. The preliminary findings reaffirm that Kanzi's language ability was acquired rather than trained.

Biographical Sketch

Mr. Fields, who began his scientific career with bonobos in 1997 at Georgia State Univesity, is the author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed publications, including Kanzi's Primal Language: the cultural initiation of primates into language with Dr. Par Segerdahl of Uppsala University in Sweden and Savage-Rumbaugh of Great Ape Trust. He also was the first scientist to write an ethnography of non-human primates featuring personal interviews with apes. He is the theoretical author of the notions of the Pan/Homo cultural continuum which guided much of his collaboration with Segerdahl and Savage-Rumbaugh.

Honors

• 2007, Delegate, People to People Ambassador Program to China

Professional Organizations

• 2005-present: Voting Member Science Circle, Great Ape Trust of Iowa
• 2000-present: Member, American Anthropological Association
• 2000-2007: Stewardship of NHK professional DVD science videos of ape language
• 1999-2007: Archivist: The LRC collection of 30 years of scientific ape language videos
• 1997-2007: Direct experience with great apes in breeding captive populations of bonobos (Pan paniscus) with a specialty in infant care and ape vocalization

Representative Publications

• Fields, W.M. (2007) “Ethnographic Kanzi versus empirical Kanzi: on the distinction between “Home” and “Laboratory” in the lives of enculturated apes. Rivista di Analisi del Testo 8.
• Fields, W.M., Segerdahl, P., & Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S. (2007) “The Material Practices of Ape Language.” In J. Valsiner & Alberto Rosa (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Socio-Cultural Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S. & Fields, W.M. (2007) “Rules and Tools: Beyond Anthropomorphism: A qualitative report on the stone tool manufacture and use by captive bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha.” In N. Toth’s Craft Institute Oldowan Technologies 1(1).
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Rumbaugh, D.M. & W.M. Fields. (2006) “Language as a Window on the Cultural Mind.” In S. Hurley (Ed.) Rational Animals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M.,Segerdahl, P., & D.M. Rumbaugh. (2005) “Culture prefigures cognition in Pan/Homo Bonobos.” Theoria 20(3).
• Segerdahl, P., Fields, W.M., & Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S. (2005) Kanzi’s Primal Language: The cultural initiation of apes into language. London: Palgrave/Macmillan.
• Fields, W.M., Segerdahl, P., & D.M. Rumbaugh. (2005) “Culture prefigures cognition in Pan/Homo Bonobos.”
• Rumbaugh, D.M., Fields, W.M. (2005) “Great Apes Living in Decatur, Georgia” In J. Caldecott & L. Miles (Eds.) The Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation.” WNEP-WCMC Press.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S., Segerdahl, P., Fields, W.M. (2005) “Individual differences in language competencies in apes resulting from unique rearing conditions imposed by different first epistemologies.” In L.L. Namy & S.R. Waxman (Eds.)
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M., & T. Spircu. (2004). “The Emergence of Knapping and Vocal Expression Embedded in a Pan/Homo Culture.” J. of Biology and Philosophy (19).
• Fields, W.M., & Savage-Rumbaugh, S. (2003). [Review of the book A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness]. Contemporary Psychology 48(8).
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W. (2002) "Hacias el control de nuevas realidades," Quark (25), 20-26.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M. & Taglialetela, J. (2001) "Language, Speech, Tools and Writing: A cultural imperative." In Thompson, E. (Ed.), Between Ourselves: Second-person issues in the study of consciousness, (pp.273-292) Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
• Savage-Rumbuagh, E.S. & Fields, W.M. (2000) "Linguistic, Cultural and Cognitive Capabilities of Bonobos (Pan paniscus)." Culture & Psychology 6(2), 131-153.