Panbanisha & Kanzi - 1990-Present

Kanzi lives in a bonobo community at a facility that includes a 50 acre (20 ha) wooded forest within a 300 acre (125 ha) woodland preserve. The bonobos spend as much time outdoors traveling and communicating as they do indoors with computers and joysticks. Locations in the forest are named with lexigrams, and the bonobos know the forest as well as humans might know their own village. The bonobos are able to plan where they will go and what they will do when they get there, and they talk about these plans on the communication boards.

Kanzi and Panbanisha continue to expand their linguistic world with music, art, writing, tool making, and tool using. Savage-Rumbaugh documented on film Kanzi’s ability to ‘rock knapp’, breaking off flakes of stone to produce functional cutting tools as taught by archeologist Nicholas Toth; Panbanisha’s ability to write lexigrams on the floor with chalk; and the ability of both to participate in musical performances with musicians.