Kanzi: Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind
Savage-Rumbaugh (E.Sue) & Lewin (Roger)
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Cover Blurb

  1. This is the story of a male bonobo, or pygmy chimpanzee, called Kanzi. His family of bonobos has been studied by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh since 1975, when the matriarch, Matata, first arrived in the United States by special arrangement with the Zairian government. This is Kanzi's odyssey, shared by the scientist who helped his natural mother raise him. Together, they have demolished accepted ideas about the uniqueness of Homo sapiens, particularly concerning human language and consciousness.
  2. As an infant, Kanzi revealed that he could learn language in the same way that a human child does: while playing alongside his mother when she was being taught words and symbols, he picked them up naturally. He is now able to understand and respond to complex spoken English sentences — a breakthrough in the controversial area of ape-language studies. He is also able to produce simple two- and three-word sentences, using symbols located on a computer keyboard. Kanzi has even invented some grammatical rules of his own which reflect bonobo ways of doing things. There is no question that in Kanzi's brain, one-third the size of the modern human brain, the capacity for language comprehension and production exists. The implications for the nature of the human ancestral mind, of two to three million years ago, are stunning.
  3. Kanzi is an exciting, ground-breaking book in which we not only share an important and controversial scientific discovery, but also enjoy the heart-warming story of the extraordinary relationship of mutual respect that, through language, became possible between a human and an ape.
  4. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is Professor of Biology and Psychology at Georgia State University and is America's leading ape-language researcher.
  5. Roger Lewin is a distinguished science writer and author of many well-known science books. He lives in the United States.
Amazon Product Description
    This is the story of the ten-year relationship between a pygmy chimpanzee and a scientist, which has called into question accepted ideas about the uniqueness of homo sapiens - particularly concerning human language and consciousness. During the course of Sue Savage-Rambaugh's scientific odyssey, Kanzi was able to demonstrate that he could learn aspects language in the way that a child does. He is now able to understand and respond to complex spoken English sentences, and to produce strings of words through a computerized lexigram, in which he has invented his own rules of grammatic structure.
Contents
    Preface – ix
    Acknowledgments – xv
  1. On a Beach in Portugal – 1
  2. The Meaning of Words – 33
  3. Talking to Each Other – 59
  4. An Uncommon Ape – 93
  5. First Glimpse – 121
  6. Inside Kanzi's Mind – 155
  7. Childside – 179
  8. Pan, the Tool-Maker – 201
  9. The Origin of Language – 223
  10. At the Brink of the Human Mind – 251
    References – 283
    Index – 291
For Kanzi, see Wikipedia: Kanzi.
Book Comment

Doubleday; First Edition edition (1 Dec 1994). For a review in "Alexander (Denis) - Science and Christian Belief 07.2 (October 1995)", see "Pearce (E.K. Victor) - Review of 'Kanzi: Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind' by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh & Roger Lewin".


"Savage-Rumbaugh (E.Sue) & Lewin (Roger) - Kanzi: Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind"

Source: Savage-Rumbaugh (E.Sue) & Lewin (Roger) - Kanzi: Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind


Preface (Full Text)
  1. 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.
  2. I had begun to study apes only a few months before this bite, but already, within three days of meeting them, I knew 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 lack-luster demonstration, I feared the headline might read, "Brilliant Ape Experiences Memory Lapse."
  5. 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.
  6. 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?
  7. 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 left 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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 non-linguistic expression of intent must match the linguistic one or the words will be ignored.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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 shoe 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.
  15. 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 first-hand 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
Review (Full Text)
  1. What if a chimpanzee were raised with all the comforts and artifacts of a human society? Would that chimp learn language as a human child does? At one point in the history of the teaching-language-to-chimps studies (when Washoe, Nim, and Sara, the best-known of the language-learning chimps, were young), the answer would have been a confident "yes." Then came the 1980's when criticisms from many quarters led to a reevaluation of that "yes." The critiques came from linguists who claimed that the accomplishments of the chimps fell far short of human language, from ape-language researchers who claimed that even these minimal accomplishments were more apparent than real (reflecting the way that the humans structured interactions for the chimps rather than the chimps' own communicative abilities), but also from the author of Kanzi, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who calmly pointed out that the evidence that the chimps were using their signs as symbols was thin. Since then, when the vehement criticisms from the first two camps had all but destroyed public support for, and interest in, teaching language to chimps, Savage-Rumbaugh has methodically gone about trying to convince herself (and, in the process, others) that the chimpanzee can use symbols to communicate.
  2. Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind is convincing, up to a point. Written for the layperson, the book is not a research report of the many excellent studies Savage-Rumbaugh has done (they are mentioned in the text and references are given) but rather a well-written story of how she has attempted to break down the wall that exists between human and chimp (on one side of the wall we have humans who are proficient language-users, on the other side chimps who are said to be language-less). In conjunction with Roger Lewin, a science writer, Savage-Rumbaugh recounts how she became interested in the chimp projects first at Oklahoma and later at Yerkes, and the inroads she has made in teaching the chimp about language. One of the most interesting chapters is the account of how Sherman and Austin, two common chimps who were originally both incapable of generalizing a "word" beyond the situation in which it was taught, subsequently learned how to spontaneously communicate requests to each other using words (actually a point at an arbitrary symbol standing for an object). The chapter not only provides evidence that these words had begun to function as symbols rather than mere associations for Sherman and Austin, but it also lays out the kind of laborious training needed to get the chimps to this point.
  3. This effortful training stands in contrast to Kanzi's education. Kanzi is the star of the book and is a bonobo (pygmy) chimp raised from birth in an environment where spoken words and the language board (arbitrary symbols to which one can point to convey an object or action) were spontaneously used to communicate with him. In response, Kanzi began to use the language board to communicate with his human companions. Kanzi's accomplishments are impressive and, given Savage-Rumbaugh's sensitivity to criticisms raised about the earlier chimp work and caution in making claims in the past, are not likely to be figments of the human observer's imagination.
  4. Understandably given that Savage-Rumbaugh felt herself under seige from all camps, the book focuses only on what Kanzi can do and does not dwell on what he can't (or at least, doesn't) do. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that there are differences between Kanzi and a language-learning child. For example, many of the illustrations of Kanzi's communications presented in the book are comments on aspects of his world. However, what we learn from the research publications (e.g., Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991) is that comments account for only 4% of Kanzi's communications. In other words, almost all of his communications come about because he wants something done, not because he wants to chat. Although undoubtedly real, these few comments do not appear to be the norm for the chimp, and their strikingly low frequency stands in contrast to young human language-learners who use their language at least as often to make conversation as to make requests.
  5. Another of the significant differences between child and chimpanzee (even a bonobo) is that, while chimps appear to require a great deal of linguistic input to develop language, human children, even if lacking a model for language altogether, will actually invent a language to communicate with those around them. Deaf children, whose hearing losses prevent them from acquiring speech and whose hearing parents have not yet exposed them to a sign language, use gestures to make requests as well as to comment on the past, present, and future and even on their own gestures. Moreover, the children's gestures are structured at both the word/gesture and sentence levels and have grammatical categories, similar to the early sentences of child language (Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1990). This difference between child and chimp is particularly important when making an evolutionary argument, since it is the ability to invent a system (and not just learn it) that is critical for such an argument to go through.
  6. Thus, while the wall between chimp and human language may be permeable, Kanzi is not equivalent to a human child in terms of either language-learning or language-creating abilities. Savage-Rumbaugh herself is undoubtedly well aware of the differences between child and chimp, but the book pays them little mind -- an unfortunate omission particularly since these differences take on new interest in light of the fact that there do appear to be some similarities between child and chimp language. Indeed, one is tempted to ask why chimps (particularly those provided with many of the artifacts of human culture) do not invent language given that they seem to be able to learn at least its rudimentary aspects.
  7. One possibility is that they do and have and that we haven't looked in the right place. The book does, at times, mention the natural communications that chimps use in the wild, arguing that we may well be underestimating the structure of such systems. Another place we may be underestimating the chimp is in his use of gesture. Throughout the book, Kanzi's gestures are frequently mentioned in passing but no systematic attention is paid to them (aside from the pointing gesture he uses to indicate the desired agent in requests). Indeed, over the course of her studies (and the book), Savage-Rumbaugh begins to concentrate solely on Kanzi's ability to understand human speech and on his attempts to produce it. This focus on speech (as opposed to nonverbal symbols like gesture which can have language-like properties) is perhaps excessively narrow, particularly in the origins of language chapter, given that humans are completely equipotential when it comes to learning a spoken language vs. a gestural language such as American Sign Language. Why should speech be the most important yardstick against which the chimp's accomplishments are measured?
  8. What then do we learn from successfully teaching a bit of language to a chimpanzee? One fascinating outcome that is mentioned in the book is what we can learn about the relationship between language and thought. For example, language-competent chimpanzees are able to learn to use a joystick on a computer through simple observation while language-naive apes must be trained to do so bit by bit. By comparing chimps who are language-users with chimps who are not, we can begin to get a sense of which tasks are facilitated by knowing symbols (and which are not).
  9. Kanzi's story is well-told. The book captures Savage-Rumbaugh's extensive knowledge of apes, as well as her deep respect and affection for them, and it does so in a very readable way. Moreover, the book paves a path away from the fruitless question of whether chimps do or don't (have language) toward more interesting questions, such as which aspects of human language are within the chimp's capabilities (and which are not), and which artifacts of human culture must be in place before those abilities can be tapped.
  10. Susan Goldin-Meadow
    Department of Psychology
    5730 South Woodlawn Avenue
    The University of Chicago
    Chicago, IL 60637
    (Note the reviewer, Dr. S. Goldin-Meadow is widely known for her research on use of sign language and gestures by young children.)
  11. References
    • Goldin-Meadow, S. & Mylander, C. Beyond the input given: The child's role in the acquisition of language. Language, 1990, 66(2), 323-355.
    • Greenfield, P. M., Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. Imitation, grammatical development, and the invention of protogrammar by an ape. (1991). In N. A. Krasnegor, D. M. Rumbaugh, R. L. Schiefelbusch, & M. Studdert-Kennedy (eds.), Biological and behavioral determinants of language development (pp. 235-258). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
    .


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