Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind

by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Lewin

The remarkable story of a "talking" chimp, a leading scientist, and the profound insights they have uncovered about our speciesHe has been featured in cover stories in Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic, and has been the subject of a "NOVA" documentary. He is directly responsible for discoveries that have forced the scientific community to recast its thinking about the nature of the mind and the origins of language. He is Kanzi, an extraordinary bonobo chimpanzee who has overturned the idea that symbolic language is unique to our species. This is the moving story of how Kanzi learned to converse with humans and the profound lessons he has taught us about our animal cousins, and ourselves.

". . . The underlying thesis is informative and well argued . . . Savage-Rumbaugh's results are impressive." — The Washington Post

"This popular, absorbing, and controversial account is recommended." — Library Journal

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Linguistics, Anthropology, Biology, Psychology

336 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a psychologist and primatologist.

See also: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Reviews

[Jon Gauthier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about how to properly design and evaluate dialogue agents—how to qualify whether some language model you've built really "understands" language or not. This is sort of an open question in my field which most people aren't very actively addressing. But the topic always comes up at some point whenever we encounter a new model which seems to be doing something interesting. Inevitably someone asks the question: "But does it really understand language?"

I was shocked and pleased to find that those sorts of discussions are not unique to the field of artificial intelligence. So too have researchers in nonhuman primate language acquisition been asking: "But does he/she really understand?"

This book seriously awakened me to the degree to which Chomskian linguistics had infiltrated my thoughts about animal communication. Savage-Rumbaugh takes a strong stand against a mainstream (eastern-seaboard USA) linguistics, which she casts as dominated by over-theoretical, syntax-obsessed pedants. While the image of east-coast US linguistics isn't much better over here in the San Francisco Bay Area, her strong rhetoric against this mainstream really shocked me out of my preconceived notions of language. This book has motivated me to update my research direction. I now have some new ammunition for my next discussion once someone asks, "But does it really understand?"

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I benefited a lot from the book for sure. But it gets three stars for 1) unnecessary biographical information, including unhappy diatribes about how her research was ignored and rejected from journals, 2) not very well grounded linguistic reasoning in places. These may not be a bother if you're just looking for a smooth read. But for someone who just wanted a grounded, no-nonsense introduction to a field, they were certainly distracting.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

IMPORTANT RESULTS FROM THE TRAINING OF A BONOBO

Biologist and psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh wrote in the Preface to this 1994 book, “This book really began the day after the first joint of my right index finger was severed by an ape I didn’t even see… I had just come to the Oklahoma ‘Chimp Farm’ to learn about signing apes, the ones that were supposed to talk to you with their hands… I had begun to study apes only a few months before this bite, but already… I knew that the rest of my life would be spent studying apes… It had not taken long to see that human beings could learn a great deal about themselves and the kinds of creatures they might once have been, by studying apes. How much of the ape was left within us and how much of what we had become resulted from the complex society we had managed to build? I… knew that many of the keys to its answer lay hidden within these animals… With something of a passion, I set about to find out how apes become apes. Does it just happen naturally or do they need to be taught how the world works just as human children need to be taught? This book is about one ape out of the eleven that I have studied. This ape, a bonobo named Kanzi, began to learn language on his own, without dolls or lessons…Actually, I never intended to study ‘ape language’ at all. I started out in the late 1960s as a behaviorist… but came to conclude that ‘control’ was not only an elusive goal, but a dehumanizing one as well…" (Pg. ix-x)

She continues, “Over the past two decades I have had the opportunity to watch some apes grow up---apes of different species and very different backgrounds. One thing stands out among a panoply of events: Rearing experiences make a difference. Exposure to people and language does not turn an ape into a human being, but it does result in an ape that can remove itself much further from the exigencies of the moment and reflect in greater depth on the possible consequences of its potential various actions. Such an ape can also understand the intentions of others as expressed through language, though the nonlinguistic expression of intent must match the linguistic one or the words will be ignored.” (Pg. xi-xii)

She begins Chapter 1, “I was near the small coastal village of Cascais, Portugal, attending a meeting organized by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, a group legendary in anthropological circles. Scientists invited to Wenner-Gren conferences are kept away from the rest of the world and encouraged to examine each other’s views in small and intense conferences.” (Pg. 1)

She reports, “The initial efforts of ape-language researchers, in the 1960s and early 1970s, were hurriedly greeted with acclaim by the popular and scientific press alike. Newspapers and scientific journals declared the same message: Apes can use symbols in a way that echoes the structure of human language, albeit in a modest manner…. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this fascination turned to cynicism. Linguists asserted that apes were merely mimicking their caretakers and that they displayed no language-like capacity at all… Multiple reasons lay behind this dramatic shift of opinion, some scientific, some sociological, and I will explore some of these reasons later.” (Pg. 6)

She continues, “By 1990, the year of the … conference, I knew that at least some of this work was reaching an audience…. I would at least have a chance to begin to tell my story, or, more accurately, Kanzi’s story… I had written a scientific paper for the event, describing my research and conclusions… I knew that I needed to show people images of Kanzi as a living, breathing, thinking being… I could be permitted only a five-minute slot for my video of Kanzi… it was clear that the doubts about ape language work would have little chance of being challenged… they felt that science could no longer avoid the central Big Question: ‘What is the nature of the human mind, how did it arise, and how does the construction of mind affect mind itself?’ Thus question … was to become the subsuming focus of all our minds during that week… What is the relationship between humans and the rest of the animal world? Is there a smooth biological continuity between our minds and those of other creatures? Or is there… a gulf so qualitatively great as to be unbridgeable?” (Pg. 7-9)

She recalls that in the 1970s, “Lucy was but the first of a number of … ‘human-reared’ apes I was to meet at the Oklahoma Primate Institute… I continued to work with Lucy for two years, while also beginning a behavioral project in which I observed four mothers and their infants.” (Pg. 42) She adds, I soon became known at the institute as ‘the unbeliever.’ … When I compared my two-year-old son’s language competence with the apes’, I … saw discrepancies that made me even more unsure about the strong claims that increasingly were being made for language competence in apes. First, I didn’t have to drill object-sign associations with my son, Shane. Words just popped into his vocabulary. Second, I didn’t have to stretch my imagination to understand most of the things he said… Third, Shane clearly understood more of what was said to him than the apes did… Seeing this, I became discouraged at the prospects of moving ape-language research forward.” (Pg. 46-49)

Later, she adds, “It was not clear that … any of the … signing apes I had encountered, possessed full linguistic representation, or referential, abilities. They could use a symbol … to request an object or activity. But they were usually unable to decode the symbol when it was used by a human in a simple request.” (Pg. 56)

She explains, “Our technique required me… to put some item of food in a dispenser linked to the keyboard. The chimp’s task was to hit the key that corresponded to the food, and thus receive it… Knowing how to use the symbol ‘banana’ as a way of getting someone to give you a banana is not equivalent to knowing that ‘banana’ represents a banana.” (Pg. 66-67) But before long, “if I held up sweet potato, M&M’s, or soycake, [the apes] could easily select the appropriate lexigram… Had they really gotten the idea?... the only way to tell was to show them a number of items not used during the … training to see if they could generalize this concept to the other symbols in their vocabulary. They did do easily.” (Pg. 69)

She summarizes, “How, then, do we answer our initial question: In what sense can a species other than Homo sapiens develop language? [Apes] Sherman and Austin clearly have a language capability of a human sort, limited though it is in many ways… A second observation … is that the language capacity the chimps developed had to be cobbled together piecemeal; it did not emerge as a smooth developmental flow as it does in human children. This conclusion is heresy to linguistic theory in general. It also, I was to discover later, turns out to be wrong.” (Pg. 92)

She clarifies, “Our work with Sherman and Austin had … made clear that while apes COULD come to comprehend symbols, the skill had to be put in place through experiences designed specifically to foster understanding. Simply teaching an ape the association between a word and a thing did not always result in the capacity to comprehend the intentions of others when they used the same word… Thus much of the ape’s understanding of language was limited to the ape as speaker.” (Pg. 126)

But soon, “Kanzi was using specific lexigrams to request and name items, AND to announce his intention---all important symbol skills that we had not recognized Kanzi possessed… Kanzi’s language acquisition seemed to announce dramatically that language acquisition was first and foremost a feat of understanding. The actual production of the sound was a matter of possessing the right peripheral apparatus to do so. The understanding of language, however, was a matter of comprehending the intended meaning behind the sounds, and Kanzi clearly was doing this… I had only my notes of what Kanzi had done. Would anyone believe this? I doubted it. I knew that convincing others would be a difficult task...” (Pg. 135-137)

She goes on, “For 17 months we kept a complete record of Kanzi’s utterances… Kanzi had a vocabulary of about fifty symbols.. he was already producing combinations of words… Other apes had also produced combinations, but Kanzi’s … reflected a competence born of comprehension, rather than a need to form longer symbol groups to answer question, as had been the case with other apes… Kanzi, however, formed spontaneous utterances such a ‘Matata grouproom tickle’ to ask that his mother be permitted to join in a game of tickle in the group room… Many of Kanzi’s multiword utterances had this character of novelty and functioned to suggest completely new actions.” (Pg. 144-145)

Later, she observes, “I formed the strong conclusion that bonobos were different from common chimpanzees, and stated so in several scientific papers.” (Pg. 177)

She recounts, “I was at the tool site with Kanzi, and he was having only modest success at producing flakes. He turned to me and held out the rocks, as if to say, ‘Here, you do it for me.’… He just sat there looking at me, then at the rock in his hand... apparently reflecting. I wondered what he was thinking… Suddenly he stood up bipedally and, with clear deliberation, threw a rock on the hard tile floor with a tremendous amount of force. The rock shattered, producing a whole shower of flakes. Kanzi vocalized ecstatically, grabbed the sharpest flakes, and headed for the tool site. There was no question that Kanzi had reasoned through the problem and had found a better solution to making flakes. No one had demonstrated the efficacy of throwing. Kanzi has just worked it out for himself. I was delighted.” (Pg. 213)

Later, she recalls, “I was about to unlock the door between their rooms when I realized … I did not have my keys. I turned to Tamuli and asked her to look for the keys… when she discovered them, she… showed them to me, but refused to let me have them back… Finally in turned to Kanzi … ‘Please tell Tamuli to give me my keys,’ I implored… Kanzi made several multisyllabic sounds to Tamuli… then to my amazement [she] quietly walked over and handed my keys back. Did Kanzi tell her to give me my keys? Did she understand him and comply? It certainly seemed so. If such an event were to occur between human beings, we would call it language… To further our understanding of animal intelligence we must learn to ask better questions … that focus on unusual events, rather than mundane and readily controllable ones. If we were to start with the assumption that animals are conscious and capable of thought, reason, and complex communication, we would find it difficult to come up with evidence that would completely disprove this view.” (Pg. 263)

This book will be of keen interest to those studying the ‘ape language’ experiments.

[Tani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this on my to-read list back when I first joined Goodreads in 2005 or 2006. I guess it says something about my reading habits that it took me more than 10 years to finally read it. Oops? Anyway, I put it on there because I find language to be deeply interesting, and Kanzi is one of the most famous of the apes that was involved in the numerous language studies. Only later did I find out that a lot of those studies had been discredited. So, I was nervous that this book was going to be bad, to say the least.

Thankfully, it was a very pleasant surprise! I really enjoyed this and found it quite interesting, despite the fact that quite some time has passed since the book's publication. Despite the title of the book, it focuses only loosely around Kanzi, which was a pleasant surprise. Instead, the book goes over the history of ape language studies, including the author's early efforts with the chimpanzees Sherman and Austin. And although Kanzi makes up a considerable part of the mid-section of the book, it also addresses issues with the application of the studies to assisting developmentally disabled children, as well as steps that the author recommends for the future of this research.

I was really impressed with the thoughtfulness of the work that is embodied in this book. It's clear that a lot of thought went into these studies and into the notion of what language actually is. I was astounded to read of some of the things that Kanzi became capable of, which are far beyond what I had expected to see. Of course, it's necessary to take the work with a grain of salt, given that the researcher is also the author, but I felt that the author took care to point out as many alternate explanations and caveats as possible.

I did have mixed feelings on the chapter about the application of the ape language studies so the children with developmental disabilities. First, given the time that this book was published, it does use correct terminology, but times have changed, and I definitely cringed every single time that the phrase 'mentally retarded children' was used. I also felt that this was by far the least detailed part of the book, which is a shame, as I would have liked to learn more. (Although, to be honest, this would likely have been the most outdated part of it, so I suppose the decision to be vague makes sense.)

Overall, I really enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. I'm no expert, and I certainly can't make any statements about where studies are in the current day, but I enjoyed what I read here, and found that it gave me some serious food for thought.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex subject matter discussed adeptly and in-depth while keeping the language and concepts clear enough for a lay-person. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh manages to raise critical questions about the nature of language (and language acquisition) in this analysis of her work with Kanzi, taking special care not to anthropomorphize the bonobo too much. Beyond the intriguing scientific discussion, the book is also an engaging story about the author's work and the relationship she has built with her subject.

A few other notes:

* The title is a bit over-the-top and over-states the case a bit. That Kanzi appears to have developed his own language and grammar does not necessarily make him "at the brink of the human mind". Reading about his behaviors, he is still very much a chimp.
* The images (photos, illustrations, diagrams) are very helpful in making sense of some of the text.
* Videos would be helpful as well. Too bad you can put videos right onto the page. I would suggest you look for some out on the web. They're really quite amazing.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was young I gave up on eating animals because I was a Hinduist, Buddhist, whatever and I thought it was a sin to torture other souls. Now I know better… After reading many books by biologists, I start to see the world around me as it is, no more souls, and I grew to respect the creatures around me so much more. Now I see an ant, and I am like an ant, this is such an incredible thing, I want to read about them…. She is so valuable… A tree… this is such an incredible thing…. Yeah, I have changed…

Why all great revolutionary scientists were met with disapproval from their colleagues? Hm… I love how she said the entire story… I admit I was a bit shocked, I didn’t expect those bonobos to be so smart.

Fav quotes:

But perhaps the deeper reason we so readily declare our uniqueness from animals is to assure ourselves that we are indeed reasoning creatures with a culture created by our own hand and mind. By setting ourselves apart from animals, we experience some small measure of safety. If we Homo sapiens are truly different by virtue of reason, we can look to reason to protect us from falling into the trap of reacting instinctively and losing the evolutionary game. When we look at animals we do not see cities or villages or agriculture or possessions—and their way of life does not look like that to which we would aspire, no matter how much we enjoy watching movies of wildlife. Therefore, it is comforting to assume that we have reason and culture by nature and that these abilities will always keep us from returning to any sort of animal state.
But at the expense of gaining some comfort in our ability to plan our future, we risk alienating ourselves psychologically from all of the other creatures on this planet. After all, we have all evolved together. As a species, we are just beginning to understand that it is our view of separateness that has led us blindly to exploit the world of nature, be it by destroying natural habitats or performing experiments on animals with insufficient concern for the effect of these actions either upon the animals or upon ourselves as moral beings.
It is becoming increasingly evident, not only from work with apes, but from studies of species as varied as dolphins, parrots, sea lions, elephants, and wolves, that man has deluded himself by focusing on this separateness. As we come to understand other animals better, our current notion of human uniqueness will likely change and we will realize that future generations may view us as having looked at animals through a distorted lens, much as we now look back at the early explorers who thought that different races of man reflected different levels of evolution.


To further our understanding of animal intelligence we must learn to ask better questions—questions that focus on unusual events, rather than mundane and readily controllable ones. If we were to start with the assumption that animals are conscious and capable of thought, reason, and complex communication, we would find it difficult to come up with evidence that would completely disprove this view. Instead, we start with the premise that they are incapable of such accomplishments and find it difficult to disprove this view.
We do not realize how deeply our starting assumptions affect the way we go about looking for and interpreting the data we collect. We should recognize that nonhuman organisms need not meet every new definition of human language, tool use, mind, or consciousness in order to have versions of their own that are worthy of serious study. We have set ourselves too much apart, grasping for definitions that will distinguish man from all other life on the planet. We must rejoin the great stream of life from whence we arose and strive to see within it the seeds of all we are and all we may become.
Our definitions of man, readied anew for each additional discovery of capacities in animals, continue to impede our sense of belonging to the greater whole. In demeaning the capacities of animals, we found it easy to glorify our own. Having invented language, we turned and looked down upon the well-spring of life from which we arose with something akin to disdain. We catalogued our achievements, chronicling in detail how distinct they were from all other creatures, hesitant even to say that a continuum existed between ourselves and them. Not only did we deny animals the potential for thought, we assumed they had no awareness of their own existences.

[Tippy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where to begin. This book is extremely repetitive and offers no special insights for today (although perhaps in her time this was revolutionary, it's all pretty obvious, standard stuff now). This is the story of a scientist. I don't know why it's named Kanzi- Kanzi doesn't show up until halfway through and then he only gets brought up a couple of times. I was hoping to read about an amazing bonobo who would captivate and surprise me with his language abilities. Instead I read yet another behavioral scientist complaining about how no-one respects them or their data and how stupid people are to believe that animals aren't at least somewhat intelligent. I even got to read the Clever Hans story again! I suppose if you've read nothing else that touches on the history of animal science than this might be interesting for you, but otherwise, you can skip it, or at least the first half of it.

The way she brings up other cultures and folks with disabilities is horrible and astounding. She also assumed the reader is Christian and from a Western culture as she compares "our" culture to others.

Anyway, there were at least a couple of anecdotes that she shared in the story that I thought were fun.

1. Working with an archeologist, they were trying to teach Kanzi to make stone tools the way our ancestors did. This is physically very difficult for a bonobo, as they are anatomically different from us. Kanzi was having some success, but one day he held the rock in his had and seemed to have an epiphany. He threw the stone on the floor and it splintered, creating the flakes he need to cut the rope. However, they didn't want him to do this, they wanted him to create tools a certain way. So they covered the floor in carpet. Well, he pulled the carpet up and smashed the rock again. Then they took him outside. He did it by hand for a while, but then he got another genius idea. He placed one stone on the floor and threw the other right at it, to smash it open. That was the end of the experiment.

2. "A very different sort of example occurred one afternoon as I was playing with Matata and her daughter Tamuli, who knows no language. Tamuli asked for my keys by pointing to them and looking at my face with a questioning expression. She then played with them for perhaps thirty minutes before dropping them... When I was ready to leave I forgot to retrieve my keys. As soon as I walked out of Tamuli's room, Kanzi, who was in an adjacent area, asked to visit Matata and Tamuli himself. I was about to unlock the door between their rooms when I realized I could not do so because I did not have my keys. I turned to Tamuli and asked her to look for the keys, not really thinking that she would understand or cooperate. To my surprise she set about looking under all the toys and blankets to try to find my keys. When she discovered them, she rushed over and showed them to me, but refused to let me have them back. I coaxed and cajoled for fifteen minutes, offering to trade many prized items for them, but to no avail. I could see that she was not going to give back the keys.

Finally I turned to Kanzi and explained that I was unable to open his door because Tamuli would not return my keys. It then occurred to me that perhaps I should solicit his help as he often seemed to be able to communicate with Tamuli far better than I could. "Please tell Tamuli to give me my keys," I implored. Kanzi climbed to the top of his room where wire mesh separated his area from Tamuli and looked at her while making a small noise. Tamuli approached Kanzi, looking directly at him. Kanzi made several multisyllabic sounds to Tamuli. Tamuli listened, then to my amazement quietly walked over and handed my keys back."

[Joe Iacovino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly more global than I had presumed. Although the bonobo Kanzi gives his name to the title of the book, the book itself allows itself intelligent extrapolation of the data he provided. All in all it was an interesting mix of data, anecdote, evolutionary history, as awareness plea, and philosophy. This was an easy read which flowed well. I was simply surprised about how much information there was with regard to things learned through the research with, and directly from, Kanzi. My only complaint is that my copy of the book for some reason repeated pg 181 on 183 for no apparent reason and the contents of 183 were missing.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had my students read portions of this for Animal Behavior. Ideally, the book should be read cover-to-cover. Savage-Rumbaugh writes in a very accessible way. She is convincing, without being abrasive. If you are interested in linguistics, tool use, or evolution, this is a really good one to tackle.

[Emily Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for a Primatology course in graduate school. Kanzi was truly an amazing chimpanzee, one of the few capable of grasping human language. Sue-Savage Rumbaugh continues with her research today, though Kanzi is no longer living, in efforts to determine how humans acquired language in the past and how it has helped our species succeed.

[Mehwish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh manages to rigorously question the idea of human uniqueness and gives an insight on the great work that she has been part of despite the opposition from various fields. The concepts are clearly conveyed and the methodology is well reported.

I had several “awe” moments and this book definitely re-emphasized my decision to “enter” primatology as a field.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Savage-Rumbaugh seems insane to me.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The amazing compacity of great apes for language comprehension. the difference between language production and language comprehension.

[Ellen Quigley · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE this so far, reading things most people wouldn't believe!

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read most of it. It was interesting, but I did not like it much.

[Rebecca Proulx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great blend of scientific method evidence but also observational evidence, both of which are key indications of the intelligence and behavior of animals. Kanzi sounds like an amazing bonobo :)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good