Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives, and story summaries.
Few apes have done more to unsettle human certainties than Kanzi the bonobo. He wasn’t the first nonhuman primate to use symbols to communicate, but he was the first to do so with such fluency, subtlety and apparent ease that it prompted uncomfortable questions about the supposed uniqueness of human language, culture and thought. Born in captivity in 1980 and raised by researchers, Kanzi absorbed lexigrams — abstract symbols representing words — not by instruction, but by observation, as his adoptive mother failed to learn them. It was Kanzi, lingering on the periphery of the lesson, who cracked the code.
He went on to master more than 300 symbols, understand thousands of spoken English words, and string ideas together to make novel expressions. In one famous episode, startled by a beaver, he combined “water” and “gorilla” to convey alarm. Studies suggested his comprehension rivaled that of a 2-year-old human child. He also made and used stone tools, mimicking early human ancestors, and later turned his curiosity toward Pac-Man and Minecraft. Unlike his wild cousins in the Congo Basin, Kanzi’s rainforest was a research center in Iowa. But in his own way, he explored.
Though he could not speak, anatomical constraints being what they are, he revealed the lie at the heart of anthropocentrism. He was no mirror of humanity — bonobos are their own species, with their own minds — but his life narrowed the gulf we draw between “us” and “them.” There was no hoax, no anthropomorphic trickery: Kanzi was simply, quietly, brilliant.
He died suddenly at 44, after a normal morning spent foraging, chasing his nephew, and grooming. He had been treated for heart disease, though necropsy results are pending. He is survived by the bonobo family he helped raise, and by a legacy that challenges the idea of what it means to be an animal — human or otherwise.
Editor’s note: Read Mongabay’s story on Kanzi “Famous bonobo Kanzi, known for smarts & gaming, dies at age 44” by Kristine Sabillo.
Banner image of Kanzi ©️Ape Initiative.
