Kanzi the Bonobo by

Kanzi Destroys the language barrier scientists have put on animals

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-06 02:08:51 UTC

Kanzi the Bonobo is a type of male ape born on October 28th, 1980 that has made history due to being able to use a variety of symbols and gestures to communicate with his caretaker Sue Rumbaugh and others that worked with him from infant to grown adult as well as helped him develop a impressive sense of comprehension skills.

Kanzi's impressive Comprehension test

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-06 02:19:34 UTC

Kanzi was one of the first apes to use symbols and gestures to create a new way of communicating with humans and tested scientists who believed animals weren't capable of such high level mental capacity.

2020-12-06 02:38:47 UTC

1. With the help of Kanzi, it was demonstrated to our society that enculturation in a language community is the key to learning a language. By five years of age, Kanzi was able to produce combinations of symbols and invent grammatical rules.

One simple example (taken from Savage-Rumbaugh's article):
The caretaker told Kanzi (who was in the first sleeping room) that we’re going to have yogurt, by using only the silent keyboard. Kanzi was asked if he would like to announce this to Panbanisha (his sister). Kanzi vocalized, then Panbanisha vocalized in return and selected ‘yogurt’ on the keyboard for the caretaker in front of her cage (Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 2004).

Due to enculturation, in addition to typical bonobo vocalizations, Kanzi is able to understand spoken English and voluntarily utter vocalization to communicate what the English and Lexigram equivalents say.

Lexigrams, utterances, and Gestures

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-08 09:48:30 UTC

Kanzi learned a total of around 348 lexigrams. In the beginning of his language and comprehensive journey, Savage-Rumbaugh was first teaching Kanzi's mother, Matata, the lexigram symbols and how to communicate with them for 2 years and she was having a difficult time. In Matata's absence to his caretakers surprise, it seemed Kanzi was secretly learning how use the lexigrams after they had never tried to teach them. On the first day of his mothers absence, the book "Apes, language, and The Human Mind" explains "Kanzi produced 120 separate utterances using twelve different symbols ("banana," "juice," "raisin," "peanuts," "chase," "bite," "tickle," "orange," "outdoors," "swing," "cherry," "sweet potato," and "ball"). " (Rumbaugh 23) Kanzi had been learning these words, learning how to use it as to what he was doing, as to what he would do next, and more various amount of ways in a accurate way.

Kanzi was able to learn and use around 348 lexigram symbols. As a human being, can you identify the different languages in the world? PLAY the game and find out:

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https://lingyourlanguage.com/

References:

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Carpendale, J., Lewis, C., & Muller, U. (2017). The development of children’s thinking: Its social and communicative foundations. SAGE.

Howell, N. R. (2015). Locating nature and culture: pan-homo culture and theological primatology. Verbum et Ecclesia, 36(3). https://doi.org/10.4102/ve.v36i3.1440

Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M. & Spircu, T., 2004, ‘The emergence of knapping
and vocal expression embedded in a Pan/Homo culture’, Biology and Philosophy
19, 541–575. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/sBIPH-004-0528-0

William H. Calvin, PhD, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

2020-12-08 22:14:18 UTC

2. Kanzi demonstrated that language and communication permit transmission of many kinds of learning (as Kanzi was able to learn different type of skills).

For example, as seen in the video below, both Kanzi (and
Panbanisha) were able to create a number of stone tools with different purposes. One of such specific example is Kanzi’s clever flaking of a sharp tool for cutting a rope in order to access bananas. Kanzi learned knapping, the crafting of stone tools by flaking flint (Howell, 2015).

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Conclusion:

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Kanzi was raised in a language community that was similar to human children, but modified in ways to make it more appropriate for apes. Kanzi, a bonobo, showed us that culture and language are not separate from nature -- in fact, they are emergent in the natural world (Howell, 2015).

HOWEVER, it is important to point out that not every scholar agrees with this conclusion. For others, this is only an example of communication - and does not imply a capacity for language.

Bibliography

2020-12-08 23:11:56 UTC

Kevin Miyazaki, L. S. (n.d.). What Can Bonobos Teach Us About the Nature of Language? Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/bonobos-teach-humans-about-nature-language-180975191/

Savage-Rumbaugh S, Wamba K, Wamba P, Wamba N. Welfare of apes in captive environments: comments on, and by, a specific group of apes. J Appl Anim Welf Sci. 2007;10(1):7-19. doi: 10.1080/10888700701277261. PMID: 17484674.

2020-12-08 23:17:20 UTC

Unfortunately, there were pretty dire consequences to Kanzi and his fellow bonobos as a result of this experiment. Due to increasing stress and financial hardships and maybe just because the scientists were not particularly ethical, the bonobos were put in harm’s way a number of times. Additionally, many people described the constant testing of the bonobos’ abilities to be not unlike circus performers, and they grew increasingly tired of showing off their aptitude to everyone who wanted to see. The autonomy of the apes was also nearly nothing: they were locked up at night in a facility. So, not only were they not allowed to express behaviors as they would in the wild, but they also could not access the human world that they were sort of expected to live within.

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-09 00:16:02 UTC

Kanzi was just an animal and animals were not supposed to be able to grow up like children and learn whatever people who raise them expose them to. Kanzi however was different as he listened and comprehended what the people teaching him said. He would understand word combinations such as "ball chase" and would respond to sentences such as "Lets play a ball chase at the A-frame" and do what he was told. Kanzi understood a variety of combination of words although his version of communicating was very simplified.

2020-12-09 00:40:54 UTC

Kanzi proving scientists Wrong yet again!

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-09 01:35:29 UTC

Scientists are hesitant and scared to let it be know that animals and in this case more specifically, apes, can have human qualities such as relevant communication, comprehension skills, empathy, theory of mind and more. Once they take this into account, it no longer puts humans on a pedestal of having such a large mental capacity that no other animal has.

Bibliography

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-09 02:46:27 UTC

- Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue, et al. "Apes, Language, and the Human Mind', Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=241371.
Created from huntercollege-ebooks on 2020-12-07 22:09:22.

Quiz on Kanzi and everything about him!

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-09 05:39:38 UTC

Answer key for Quiz

jadebeswick34 — 2020-12-09 05:43:49 UTC

2020-12-09 12:13:32 UTC

Kanzi the Bonobo is a male ape that originates from Des Moines group. He was born at Yerkes Primate Center on October 28th in 1980. Kanzi’s talents were discovered by accident. The ape was born to a female named Lorel but was raised by a different, more dominant female named Matata, which adopted Kanzi at some point in time. A researcher Sue Savage-Rumbaugh taught Matata to communicate by pointing to symbols on a keyboard called lexigram, but Matata showed little interest in this activity. Kanzi, who was two years old, in its turn quickly became interested in the lexigram during his mother’s teaching lessons and continued with this. The researchers decided to switch to Kanzi, and his talent for learning the language began to develop.

Kanzi was an alpha man to a group consisted of his sister, mother, nephew, and four other bonobos. in 2005, they all moved into an 18-room laboratory complex at the Great Ape Trust, North America’s.

But Kanzi was mostly raised among humans, which developed a burning desire to have them as a part of his world. He wanted to share, communicate, and be praised by humans and was getting sad when realizing he can't do what humans do a hundred percent.

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Bibliography:

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Raffaele, P. (2006, November 01). Speaking Bonobo. Retrieved December 09, 2020, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/speaking-bonobo-134931541/

Hamilton, J., & Pereira, R. (2006, July 08). A Voluble Visit with Two Talking Apes. Retrieved December 09, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2006/07/08/5503685/a-voluble-visit-with-two-talking-apes

2020-12-09 14:38:34 UTC