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Kanzi died at the age of 44. The emblematic Bonobo has reshaped our understanding of the intelligence of the monkeys, which calls into question the long -standing beliefs of what separates humans from our close living parents.
Kanzi died at monks, Iowa, March 18 at the age of 44, according to At Cognition and monkeys’ conservation initiativeA research group dedicated to the study and preservation of Bonobos. His managers still expect autopsy results, but he seemed to be on the day of his death, chasing another bonobo through the enclosure, feeding on food and participating in grooming. That said, the elderly kanzi was treated for heart disease. Life expectancy for Bonobos is around 40 years, so his death is not entirely unusual or unexpected.
“Kanzi means so many people for so many people. Our team is absolutely devastated by the death of Kanzi,” the APE initiative said in his press release. “A favorite among its members of the Bonobo family, Kanzi was a friend of everyone.”
Kanzi is really a legend among the big apes – a group that includes chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans (yes, you are a big monkey). His propensity for language and the manufacture of tools, as well as his clear zest for life, establishes it as one of the most important non -human minds that we have ever studied – and he had a deep influence on my own intellectual path.
Born in captivity in 1980, Kanzi was initially raised at Yerkes field station in Georgia, part of what is now known as the National Emory Primate Research Center. Kanzi, at the age of five, with his sister Panbanisha, was moved to the Linguistic Research Center of Georgia State University. From there, the pair found itself at the Great Ape Trust at monks, Iowa – an installation that would become later controversial; The center stopped after Panbanisha’s death in 2012 in the middle allegations of animal ill -treatment and internal dysfunction. The site obtained a Second life in 2013 When the APE initiative intervened to take control of operations.
The whole gorilla And Washoe the chimpanzee Communicated via sign language, but Kanzi brought communication to a new level, demonstrating a profound capacity to communicate via symbols and to understand verbal English.
A Kanzi Kanzi goalkeeper, Primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, guided it through its development using a labeled keyboard with geometric symbols called lexigrams. Working at the Great Ape Trust, Savage-Rumbaugh said Kanzi finally learned the meaning of around 3,000 words pronounced.
In the 1990s, archaeologists Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick of the University of Indiana worked in close collaboration with Kanzi, Teach him to do and use stone tools Using techniques borrowed from the first humans. Over time, Kanzi did not just copy their methods – he began to develop his own way of chopping stones, offering Rare insight in the cognitive and motor skills required for the manufacture of prehistoric tools.
While in the Great Ape Trust, Kanzi and his colleagues monkeys appreciated an installation equipped with drinking fountains, hydraulic doors that they could work themselves (humans had to buzz to enter, the monkeys acting as guards towards their own installation), a kitchen supplied with a machine to sell and a microwave oven, and even a complete complaint with a TV and a VCR. Kanzi was known to enjoy the film Clint Eastwood All the senses but loose (with the Orang-Outan Manis), with Fire quest And Greystoke: the legend of Tarzan, And baby.
Famous, Kanzi was also a player. I learned for the first time on Kanzi in 2006 when I spotted a NHK BOOTLEGGED YOUTUBED VIDEO showing a bonobo playing Pac-Man with competence and pleasure. I corresponding With Savage-Rumbauugh about the video, and she said to me: “This film is so convincing and there are so many (more than 300 hours) in so many different natural circumstances, that all thought that these clips represent something other than their real skills, become unreasonable.” For me, experience has proven to change their life, get on the right track to continue more work in animal rights activism and promote the concept of Non -human animal personality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpfoyqn9-0
Later, Kanzi would also show a keen interest in Minecraft, as chronicle of Youtuber Christopher Slayton in 2023. Speaking in the register of monks, Amanda Epping, research coordinator on the APE initiative, said Kanzi loved the video game and liked to have a crowd that applauded him. “It’s fun for him, it’s mentally stimulating,” said Epping, adding that “Kanzi’s ability to acquire new skills in a few minutes that showed him was really incredible, he could understand what should be done in Minecraft in a few attempts at the task.”
Kanzi was more than a scientific curiosity, as evidenced by the comments of the APE initiative. It was living proof that the artificial borders that we train between human and non -human intelligence are more fragile and much more vague than we thought. By thinking about Kanzi and his extraordinary life, it is clear that the gap between humans and our monkeys is not as wide as we would like to do it.
