Kanzi
Kanzi (born October 28, 1980), also known by the lexigram (from the character 太), is a male bonobo who has been the subject of several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude. Biography. Kanzi was born to Lorel and Bosandjo at Yerkes Field Station at Emory University in 1980. Shortly after birth Kanzi was stolen and adopted by a more dominant female, Matata, the matriarch of the group. In 1985, Kanzi was moved to the Language Research Center at Georgia  State University. He was later relocated, along with his sister, Panbanisha, to the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Iowa. The ill-fated facility, founded in 2004 by local businessman, Ted Townsend, closed after losing funding, experiencing allegations of neglect, and a flood. In 2013, the Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative (ACCI), under the direction of Jared Taglialatela, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and Bill Hopkins, a professor at Georgia State University, took over the facility. When the ACCI took over Kanzi's care in 2013, he was severely obese due to mismanagement of his diet and  activity. His new caretakers changed Kanzi's diet to a more species-appropriate one and increased his opportunities for physical activity. Kanzi has since lost over seventy-five pounds. As an infant, Kanzi accompanied Matata to sessions where Matata was taught language through keyboard lexigrams, but showed little interest in the lessons. It was a great surprise to researchers then when one day, while Matata was away, Kanzi began competently using the lexigrams, becoming not only the first observed ape to have learned aspects of language naturalistically rather than through direct training, but also the first observed bonobo to appear  to use some elements of language at all. Within a short time, Kanzi had mastered the ten words that researchers had been struggling to teach his adoptive mother, and he has since learned more than 348, which he can also combine for new meaning. When he hears a spoken word (through headphones, to filter out nonverbal clues), he points to the correct lexigram. He can initiate communication using the lexagrams. Sue Savage Rumbaugh, in 2006, claimed Kanzi understands about 3,000 spoken words. According to a "Discover" article, Kanzi is an accomplished tool user. Kanzi's adoptive mother, Matata, was believed  to be in her mid- to late- 40s when she died in June 2014. In the matriarchal society of bonobos, a male's position is primarily determined by the position of the females he is related to. Matata was the group's chief leader so his status as the highest ranking male was established by being adopted as her "son". According to Smithsonian Magazine, Kanzi "has the mien of an aging patriarch – he's balding and paunchy with serious, deep-set eyes." This description is confirmed by a full-page color photograph of Kanzi in the March 2008 "National Geographic , and a full-page black-and-white photograph in Time" magazine. Examples of behavior and abilities. Kanzi's behavior and abilities have been the topic of research published in scientific journals, as well as reports in popular media. Research programs. When he was eight years old, Kanzi was a subject of a research program in which his ability to respond to spoken requests was compared with that of a two-year-old human child called Alia. The study took nine months to complete. Kanzi and Alia were given 660 spoken instructions, asking them to deal with familiar objects in novel  ways. Kanzi responded correctly to 74 percent of the instructions, Alia to 65 percent. Another study, designed and carried out by archaeologists Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth, aimed to compare Kanzi's cognitive and mechanical abilities with those of early human ancestors who made and used Early Stone Age tools (probably Homo habilis), such as Oldowan stone flakes and cores (a core is the rock from which a flake has been removed). In this study, Schick and Toth showed Kanzi how to flake stone, producing a sharp edge that could be used to cut through a rope in order to  gain access to a food reward. After modeling the flaking behavior on a variety of occasions, the researchers set up each experiment by placing a food reward inside a box with a transparent lid which was held closed by a length of rope. Kanzi would then be led into an enclosure where the box was located and provided with the stones needed for flaking (known as chert or flint). Over the course of this multi-year study, Kanzi not only learned how to flake, he also developed his own method by throwing the cobbles onto hard surfaces to make a  flake, as opposed to the hand-held percussion method that was modeled for him. With the many sharp flakes he produced, Kanzi was able to cut through the rope to gain access to the food reward. However, the flakes he produced and used were more crude than those produced by Early Stone Age humans. A similar study on the flaking abilities of chimpanzees failed to recreate the findings with Kanzi. The authors suggest that the discrepancies in findings are due to the differences in rearing backgrounds of the subjects. Whilst Kanzi spent a significant portion of his life around humans  and being trained by them (leading to a high level of enculturation), the chimpanzees in the recent study were not trained or demonstrated how to make or use flakes (or in any other human behaviours). This may explain why Kanzi was able to develop flaking after observing humans, and the chimpanzees in the recent study were not. Anecdotes. The following are anecdotes, rather than experimental demonstrations. Language. Although Kanzi learned to communicate using a keyboard with lexigrams, Kanzi also picked up some American Sign Language from watching videos of Koko the gorilla, who communicated using sign language to her keeper  Penny Patterson; Savage-Rumbaugh did not realize Kanzi could sign until he signed, "You, Gorilla, Question", to anthropologist Dawn Prince-Hughes, who had previously worked closely with gorillas. Based on trials performed at Yerkes Primate Research Center, Kanzi was able to identify symbols correctly 89–95% of the time. Kanzi cannot speak in a manner that is comprehensible to most humans, as bonobos have different vocal tracts than humans, which makes them incapable of reproducing most of the vocal sounds humans can make. Nonetheless, it was noticed that every time Kanzi communicated with humans with specially-designed graphic symbols, he  also produced some vocalization. Later, it was discovered that Kanzi was producing the articulatory equivalent of the symbols he was indicating, although in a very high pitch and with distortions. According to the research of Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi "can understand individual spoken words and how they are used in novel sentences". For example, the researcher asked Kanzi to go get the carrot in the microwave, Kanzi went directly to the microwave and completely ignored the carrot that was closer to him, but not in the microwave. In another example, a researcher gave the task, "feed your ball some  tomato". Alia, a human 2-year-old, did not know what to do, but Kanzi immediately used a spongy toy Halloween pumpkin as a ball and began to feed the toy. Other animals used in language studies: