Now 40, Great Ape Trust bonobo matriarch Matata leads quiet life of dignity with family

Des Moines, Iowa – January 28, 2010 – Her exact birth date is unknown, but every year around Jan. 1, the bonobo research and caretaker staffs at Great Ape Trust pause to honor the birth of Matata, the matriarch of the bonobo family living at the Des Moines, Iowa scientific research facility, and reaffirm her pivotal role in ape language and cognition research.

Now in her 40^th year, Matata lives a life of simple dignity with her family: her biological children Panbanisha, Elikya and Maisha; her grandson, Nyota, and her adopted son, Kanzi, whose spontaneous lexigram utterances three decades ago redefined the study of ape language with the breakthrough finding that some of these bonobos, like children, acquire language by being exposed to it.

In fact, if Matata, a quintessential mother whether speaking of bonobo or human species, had not adopted young Kanzi as her own just hours after his Oct. 28, 1980 birth, ape language research might have taken a different turn or might not exist at all, said William M. Fields, director of scientific research at Great Ape Trust. Kanzi would have remained with his biological mother, Lorel, and would not have been exposed to ape language during his infancy.

Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh described the astonishing moment in science – one that still stands today as one of the great breakthroughs in ape language research – in Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind, her 1994 book with British anthropologist and writer Roger Lewin. The notion that Baby Kanzi might have absorbed what he had seen while he sat patiently on Matata’s lap through some 30,000 mostly unsuccessful language trials hadn’t occurred to Savage-Rumbaugh, at the time an up-and-coming scientist and now a Scientist with Special Standing at Great Ape Trust.

But when Kanzi’s instruction began at the lexigrams keyboard began when he was 6 months old, the results left Savage-Rumbaugh standing at the precipice of a new scientific frontier. “I was hesitant to believe what I was seeing,” she wrote. “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.”

Matata was born in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, around 1970, and lived as a wild bonobo for five years before she was captured and imported to the United States in 1975 as part of a National Academy of Sciences initiative aiding third-world nations through the development of unique indigenous resources. Matata, one of the last wild-born apes to enter the United States before U.S. and international law prohibited the importation and exportation of endangered species, was placed at Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, Ga. for biomedical research – experiments that never occurred – thankfully so, said the Great Ape Trust scientists who continue their noninvasive, collaborative research in Des Moines.

Though Matata never demonstrated receptive competence for spoken English in the way that Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota have, her importance in the longitudinal language studies at Great Ape Trust cannot be overstated, Fields said.

A member of the non-language control group, the wild-born Matata makes a cultural contribution to the group that cannot be duplicated. “Her cultural contribution is that of free-ranging or wild-born culture,” Fields said. “We know it’s important, but we don’t fully know to the extent the culture she brought from her group and what impact it had on the human enculturation of Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota.”

Socially, Matata fills another important role – that of mother and grandmother.  There also is almost nothing that occurs in the bonobo home that Matata isn’t aware of, involved in or – in the case of the social groupings that are so important in bonobo society – behind. A vigilant leader, Matata is always the first to send out alarm calls if she senses something is amiss.

“Matata’s contribution to the family occurs every day,” Fields said. “She is the matriarch and uncontested dominant member of the family, and the other bonobos vie to spend time with her.”

On a recent winter morning as the sun streamed through the glass-paneled ceiling of “the greenhouse,” an open area in the center of the Great Ape Trust bonobo home where the family enjoys spending recreational time, Matata and two of her offspring, Elikya and Maisha, leisurely fished for fruit in a splash pool at one corner, though a more substantial breakfast of oatmeal awaited them. As a train whistled through a nearby railroad crossing, Kanzi, out of sight in the east wing of the building made a cry of alarm, which Matata answered loudly. Soon bonobo vocalizations filled the compound, as conversations might have in a human family. The momentary cause for alarm passed, Matata relaxed and watched closely as the two younger bonobos engaged in play, roughhousing and finally grooming one another.

Fields said the scene supports findings about the importance of families in bonobo society.  “It’s not about the activity, but the family getting together,” Fields said. “In a research setting, it’s the doing of the research together that’s important, not the reward.”

Matata has been separated from two of her children: a son, Akili, 30, who lives at the San Diego Zoo, and a daughter, AnaNeema, 18, who lives at the Milwaukee Zoo. Matata is one of the five oldest bonobos in captivity in the United States today. Others include Kitty, 58, Linda, 54, and Laura, 43, all of the Milwaukee Zoo; and Kanzi’s biological mother, Lorel, 41, who lives at the Jacksonville Zoo. Matata’s last two pregnancies ended with miscarriage.