Kanzi Turns 30

He's one of the world's most intelligent - and studied - nonhuman primates, and now Kanzi is 30 years old.

Born October 28, 1980 at Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Kanzi's formative years were spent at Georgia State University.  From 1980 to 2005, Kanzi lived and collaborated with scientists at GSU's Language Research Center where he became the world’s undisputed ape-language superstar.

After repeated research trials with his adopted mother, Matata, failed - scientists turned their attention to baby Kanzi, who became the first of his species to acquire language as children do: by being exposed to it.  That moment in science is captured in the following except from Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh & Roger Lewin (1994, John Wiley & Sons, Inc):

The day after Matata's departure, we set up a keyboard in the expectation that Kanzi would begin his language instruction - if he could learn to sit in one place long enough.  Kanzi, however, had his own opinion about the keyboard and he began at once to make it evident by using it on more than 120 occasions that first day.  I was hesitant to believe what I was seeing.  Not only was Kanzi using the keyboard as a means of communicating, but he also knew what the symbols meant - in spite of the fact that his mother had never learned them.

This was one of the most intriguing times of my professional life.  I recognized that if what we thought we had accomplished proved indeed to be accurate, it could revolutionize our understanding of the nature of language acquisition, indeed perhaps of all learning processes.  Equally significant, it could seriously undermine a main tenet in the body of knowledge around which both the social sciences and the physical sciences are constructed - that of the uniqueness of human mind.  We would have to reformulate our view of apes as organisms.  if apes could acquire language in the manner that humans do, without instruction, this meant that man did not possess a unique sort of intelligence, dramatically diffrerent form that of all animals.

The first ape to demonstrate receptive competence of spoken English, Kanzi excels in research featuring novel sentences – that is, phrases that preclude the learning of specific responses. He also is adept at stone toolmaking, giving scientists insight into cognitive and biomechanical skills and constraints, and helping them better understand levels of skill in early prehistoric ancestors.

In 2005, Kanzi and the colony of bonobos transferred from the Language Research Center to Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. In June of 2010, Kanzi became a father for the first time with the birth of his son, Teco.

To view photos of Kanzi's early years at the Language Research Center and video clips demonstrating his language and symbolic competency, go the Slideshows and Videos section in the left margin.