Male Bonobo Named Kanzi Learned Language
Overview of Linguistic Research with a Pygmy Chimpanzee
Feb 28, 2009
Kanzi is a male bonobo who was brought to the Georgia State University Language Research Centre with his mother when he was 6 months old.
Teaching Language to Apes
The apes in the research centre where Kanzi was brought were trained to read and communicate simple ideas through geometric symbols placed on a computer keyboard. To communicate, the animals could touch a symbol & that symbol was related to a specific word.
For example, to train the word-symbol association for “banana”, a symbol designated as banana would be placed on the keyboard. Each time the chimpanzee wanted a piece of banana s/he would have to press the correct key. Whenever s/he got it correct, the keys would change position so that the chimp learned to look for that specific symbol.
How Kanzi Learned Language
Chimpanzees normally do not begin training until they reach the age of 2 or 3. Since Kanzi was only 6 months old when he arrived at the research centre, all training was directed at his mother. Bonobo children are in constant care of their mothers for the first few years of their lives, so Kanzi was present (and interfered quite a bit) during all of her training.
When Kanzi was 2 ½ years old he was separated from his mother and began training. On the first day that his mother was absent, he produced 120 utterances and used all 12 symbols on the keyboard. Results on the second day were more impressive, as he began to use symbol-combinations, for example, “MELON GO” so that he could go outdoors and eat melon (Rumbaugh et al. 1998, p. 22).
Kanzi was not interested in training sessions, so, because of the amount of vocabulary he already demonstrated, the researchers decided to continue to allow Kanzi to acquire ‘language’ without training and did not try to teach him any symbols outright.
More symbols were added to the keyboard so that he could learn more vocabulary produce more complex utterances. He used the keyboard to talk to himself as well; however, he would not allow the researchers to see what he was ‘saying’ on the keyboard, and would turn his back to them.
Kanzi Learned More than Other Apes
Kanzi was able to explain things he wanted to do, things he wanted people to do to each other, and things that had happened. In general, he was different from other apes who had been trained. For example, he often refused to do things even though he understood what was being asked of him, presumably because he did not use language to gain rewards. He could also interpret sentences correctly the first time he heard them and he had learned to read printed symbols & use them to talk to people rather than to just respond to them.
After a few years of training, Kanzi had learned 256 words, as well as vocalizations, gestures and combinations of the three. According to Rumbaugh (1998 p. v), Kanzi was able to understand English sentences as well as a 2 ½ year old child. The results of the work done with this bonobo seem to indicate that (at least) these apes are capable of acquiring linguistic and cognitive skills beyond those of apes in previous language-research.
References
Rumbaugh, S.R., Shanker, S.G., and Taylor, T.J. (1998). Apes, Language and the Human Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
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