Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind

by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

  KANZI

  KANZI

  The Ape at the Brink

  of the Human Mind

  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

  Roger Lewin

  This text is printed on acid-free paper.

  Copyright © 1994 by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin.

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada.

  Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

  This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If legal, accounting, medical, psychological, or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

  Photographs on pp. 62, 141, and 182 © Language Research Center, Georgia State University Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue.

  Kanzi : the ape at the brink of the human mind / Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Lewin.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

  ISBN 0-471-58591-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-471-15959-X (paper) 1. Kanzi (Bonobo) 2. Bonobo—Psychology. 3. Chimpanzees—Psychology. 4. Learning in animals. 5. Animal communication.

  I. Lewin, Roger. II. Title.

  QL737.P96S26 1994

  599.88’440451—dc20

  94-9038

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  This book is dedicated to my mother and father, who gave their entire lives selflessly to their seven children, with never a thought that any parent might do otherwise. They worried over us, they prayed for us, and they tried tirelessly to set the best example they knew how, too often feeling they had fallen short.

  My father taught me to value life and honesty and always to give my best to both. My mother taught me that the qualities of grace and kindness may not come easily, but they must constantly be sought, for they form the nexus of all relationships.

  When I first began to study apes, they wondered why. When I first was bitten, they asked why. I hope that now—they will know why.

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1 On a Beach in Portugal

  2 The Meaning of Words

  3 Talking to Each Other

  4 An Uncommon Ape

  5 First Glimpse

  6 Inside Kanzi’s Mind

  7 Childside

  8 Pan, the Tool-Maker

  9 The Origin of Language

  10 At the Brink of the Human Mind

  References

  Index

  Preface

  This book really began the day the first joint of my right index finger was severed by an ape I didn’t even see. Up from the bowels of a dimly lit cage she raged and parted me from the first joint of my finger. Was she angry at me? She didn’t even know me, nor I her. I had just come to the Oklahoma “Chimp Farm” to learn about the signing apes, the ones that were supposed to talk to you with their hands. Little did I know that most adult chimps living in social groups are not kindly disposed to strangers, viewing them as something of a threat to be dealt with immediately. This was long before Jane Goodall had learned that apes kill members of other groups in the wild.

  I had begun to study apes only a few months before this bite, but already, within three days of meeting them, I knew that the rest of my life would be spent studying apes. So like us they are, and yet so distinctly different in some ways. 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 was fascinated with this question and knew that many of the keys to its answer lay hidden within these animals. It never occurred to me to stop studying them because I was bitten, either then or on the many occasions that followed. Each time I learned more about what can prompt aggression and grew grateful for the insights, if not for the injuries.

  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 drills or lessons.

  The collaboration that resulted in the telling of Kanzi’s story began late one afternoon with a phone call from Roger Lewin, not long after Roger had come to the Language Research Center to see Kanzi for himself. Roger greatly enjoyed his visit, but I was feeling discouraged because in response to everything I had asked Kanzi to do, he either refused, appeared to have no clue as to what I was asking, or did exactly the opposite to what I had asked. Kanzi didn’t really like being watched by strangers. When people came to “see Kanzi for themselves,” he often tried to determine what sort of a reaction he could get from them by startling them at unsuspecting moments. Kanzi does not like strangers in his space because he cannot understand why they want to come and stare at him. I knew that Roger was thinking of writing a report on the work at the Language Research Center for the New Scientist, and given Kanzi’s lackluster demonstration, I feared the headline might read, “Brilliant Ape Experiences Memory Lapse.”

  Having one’s scientific findings painstakingly collected over decades thrown into question by the “attitude” of an ape toward visitors has been something that I have had to accept as a consequence of daring to study what is called “ape language.” Actually, I never intended to study “ape language” at all. I started out in the late 1960s as a “behaviorist” hoping to discover “principles whereby behavior could be controlled” but came to conclude that “control” was not only an elusive goal, but a dehumanizing one as well. I shifted my focus to attempting to understand the development of the mind in very young children, as it seemed that if this were elucidated, perhaps our society could use such knowledge to build better individuals from the start.

  Sometimes the problems of our society are blamed on poverty, other times they are blamed on lack of crime control, and on other occasions they are said to arise from lack of tolerance. We do not yet understand why one individual born into an unstable, lower socio-economic family becomes a president and another becomes a criminal. Is it really just “bad genes”? Or could there be experiences that would enable any child to reach inside himself or herself and pull out the best instead of the worst, as both come packed into each human being?

  It is not possible to rear human children experimentally in such a way as to look for answers to this question. Nor can one “watch and see” as children are raised. Twenty to forty years are required to follow children from birth to adulthood. Even when psychologists are prepared to put their careers on hold for this length of time and even if they are able to obtain money for such work, they cannot really watch what happens inside the family. They find themselves limited to interviewing people briefly, giving “standardized assessment tests,” and perhaps videotaping some standardized interactions. But since we don’t really know why one person succeeds and another does not, we don’t know what to “test for.” Our tests measure what is easy to measure, whether or not it is relevant, and at the end of such studies, we are still lef
t only with “measurements.” We must search to correlate these in a quest to determine which “variables” are related to success, assuming that the recipe for making a person may lie, for example, in the degree of correlation between income and maternal time in the home.

  No one in modern societies watches what happens as kids grow up except their parents, and often they do not. In apes, as in “primitive” societies, everyone watches the kids grow up; indeed, everyone is responsible for everyone else.

  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.

  The first two years of an ape’s life are something of a magical time. During this period, if exposed to brightly colored geometric symbols, apes learn to tell them apart as easily as if they were looking at different kinds of food. If exposed to human speech, they become responsive to the phonemes and the morphemes so that spoken language no longer sounds like a string of noises. If they watch television, they come to see the patterns on the screen as representations of other people and other apes in different places, rather than just flickering images. A sense of imagination and narrative begins to emerge, so that they become as interested in “TV” stories to which they can relate as are human children. They grow interested because they can “make sense” out of what they see and out of many of the words they hear. They especially like to watch interactions—interactions between apes as well as interactions between apes and humans. Themes of danger and danger resolved rivet their attention.

  When they do not have these experiences, they encounter great difficulty in distinguishing different geometric symbols, in telling sounds from words, and in following an imaginative narrative depicted on a television screen. Often, even extensive training attempts cannot compensate for the lack of such early exposure.

  What do observations such as these, and apes like Kanzi, tell us about ourselves, our society, and the early experiences of our own children? The answers to these questions are elusive. Certainly people who have helped rear Kanzi elect to treat their own children very differently with regard to language competency. They recognize that language awareness and comprehension emerge long before a child can say anything, and that the child will demonstrate this awareness if given a chance. Children of such parents recognize symbols and use them to communicate months before they are able to produce intelligible speech, suggesting that the linguistic capacity of the child during the period prior to the onset of speech may be seriously underrated.

  But having gained these insights was one thing, convincing others was yet another. After Roger’s visit, I tried to tell myself that it had not gone as poorly as I feared. I had shown Roger videotapes of Kanzi in a better mood, and tried to clarify what Kanzi was capable of doing. I knew, however, that videotapes were sometimes suspect of being selected to eliminate Kanzi’s “mistakes,” and people often cared only about what they could see for themselves. Because what Kanzi elected to show most strangers was his skill in intimidating them, I recognized ape language had a credibility problem.

  What I did not realize was the depth in which Roger had already investigated the work of the Language Research Center. He had taken the time that was needed to study the scientific reports from the center that now spanned two decades and more than three hundred publications, and to watch other tapes that detailed what Kanzi and other apes were capable of doing. He recognized that scientific findings often unfold in an organic manner and that one can neither fake real findings nor show them off. They emerge because one keeps searching in every possible manner for explanations to complex phenomena. The understandings that arise are of a “whole cloth” and function to help us see ourselves from new perspectives. They could not have been “shown off” in a brief visit even if Kanzi had elected to cooperate.

  Roger called me later to thank me for the opportunity to visit. I was happily surprised. He told me that he had been deeply impressed with all that he had seen and urged me to write a book that would convey much of what I had been compelled to leave out in scientific research reports. I agreed that it was important to attempt, but saw no time window. Caring for all of the apes, while attempting to accomplish research, was already more than a full-time job. I asked if he would help. He agreed. I was surprised yet again, and much pleased. So enmeshed had I become in the work that things to which I no longer gave a second thought took others by surprise and required explanation. I knew I needed someone to work on the story with me; it was too all-encompassing to tackle alone. And so we set about the task together. The book that follows, though written in the first person, represents a joint effort to portray a story we have both come to understand and appreciate far better by working together. Although the firsthand experiences were mine, in sharing them with Roger they became, in a sense, our joint experiences, interpreted through four eyes instead of two. Roger never walked in the woods with Kanzi, but the story quickly became his as well as mine because he understood it, and then we worked to make it ours. I hope we have succeeded.

  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

  Acknowledgments

  Many people have played a role in this story over the years, each with his or her own attraction to and insight into the mind of the ape. Four stand out very clearly as having been an integral part of all that has happened and all that continues to unfold each day. Duane Rumbaugh has provided constant drive, constant encouragement, and constant support. He has made me believe that what is being learned is worth the effort and will, someday, be of value. Rose Sevcik has been with me and with all the apes through every problem and every crisis, and there have been many. Without her aid and steadfast courage, there are times that I could not have gone forward. Her belief in what Kanzi can do and who he is has made all the difference. Liz Pugh has been there as well. She has gotten me out of cages when Austin and Panzee locked me in, and she has shown Kanzi and Panbanisha they can do a thousand things they thought were impossible. She has raised a child as well as four apes, and no one knows better than she how close we really are. Mary Ann Romski has made everything we have done and learned real, as she has worked more responsibly than anyone will ever know to translate the best of what we have learned into real and pragmatic help for human children. But her efforts have not stopped at help, they have gone far into the scientific documentation of why what we have learned really works.

  Brent Swenson, or “Dr. Brent” as we refer to him, has kept Kanzi and many other of our apes alive on more than one occasion. He has seen them through air sac infections, severe allergy attacks, heart defects, herpes, strep, flu, injuries, pneumonia, abscessed teeth, and many other ailments that befall man and ape alike. He has done it with far less “information” than most medical doctors have at their disposal, for the apes do not cooperate so willingly with regard to standard medical inspections. He has also done it with a patience that is extraordinary.

  Without his wealth of knowledge, his keen eye, and his sensitivity to all that apes do when they are ill, we never could have succeeded in learning about Kanzi. The first bonobo that was studied in captivity by Robert Yerkes died around four to five years of age. By contrast, the advent of modern medicine, when practiced by a person of great sensitivity, skill, and special concern for bonobos, has made possible research that surely would have been terminated in an untimely manner in an earlier day.

  While I was working on the book, many people provided advice, encouragement, and support. Shelly Williams made certain that the lab continued to run effecti
vely and that Kanzi and the other apes were not only happy but involved with life and with research in a creative and positive way. Iain Davidson, Patricia Greenfield, Duane Rumbaugh, Mary Ann Romski, Rose Sevcik, and Nick Toth all participated far beyond the ordinary in helping with the manuscript itself, in its detail and its story. Some of the excellent photos have been provided by Nick Nichols, taken with insight and intensity out of concern for the plight of apes everywhere.

  Solid encouragement that the story being told was worthwhile and that its philosophical implications could be successfully conveyed has been provided by Stuart Shanker.

  Many people continue to try to make certain each day that the apes in our laboratory receive every opportunity to express themselves both to human beings and to other apes, and to live lives full of social interchange and self-dignity. To the people who give themselves so selflessly to these apes and who are trying hard to see through the rough exterior that apes project to the depths of the gentle souls that rest underneath, I am deeply grateful. Thank you Adrea Clay, Angela Fox, John Kelly, Linda McGarra, Julie Meitz, Jeannine Murphy, Skip Haig, Jane Patton, Phillip Shaw, Dan Rice, Ryan Sheldon, and David Washburn.

  The apes at the Language Research Center, with the exception of Matata, have all been born either at the Yerkes Primate Center or at the Language Research Center of Georgia State University. Without the trust and confidence of the Yerkes Center, which permitted us to work with these apes, this story could never have begun to unfold. Without the unflagging support of Georgia State University, which has built our facility, provided us with a forest, and stood by the value of our work through attacks from animal rightists as well as those who believe apes have no business learning language, the story of these apes would have vanished long ago. And without the peer support provided by panel after panel of site visitors from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, we would never have had the funds to make any inroads into the area of ignorance that surrounded our understanding of the intellectual capacities of apes.