Kanzi with Lexicon video from the Great Ape Trust

Most Bonobo Lovers are doubtless familiar with the outstanding work by Sue
Savage-Rumbaugh with a group of bonobos, the most famous member being Kanzi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanzi.

I have had the privilege of getting to know Sue, and a few months ago had
the amazing experience of visiting her and the bonobo group at the Great Ape
Trust of Iowa in Des Moines http://www.greatapetrust.org/. I was allowed to
go inside the glass enclosure such that there was only a chicken-wire-type
separation between me and them, so there I was, experiencing their reality
after many years of being a fan in the bleachers. Kind of like it must have
been in the ’60s if you got to be in the front row of a Beatles concert!

I had cool interactions with Kanzi’s foster mother Matata (his birth mother
is Lorel, Lucy’s mom in I’m Lucy) and with his sister Panbanisha
http://www.greatapetrust.org/bonobo/meet/panbanisha.php, but most of the
time Kanzi and I sat, face-to-face, as close to one another as we could get
given the chicken wire, staring into each other’s eyes and hanging out.
Occasionally he’d indicate something on his keyboard, but mostly it was me
telling him how wonderful I thought he was and his apparently taking it in
with deep pleasure.

While it’s obvious in the photographs in I’m Lucy, it was only after looking
into Kanzi’s eyes that I took in the fact that bonobo irises go across the
whole eye rather than being a central circles surrounded by white like our
eyes. This has the amazing consequence that it feels like gazing into dark
pools of, well, wisdom. I sometimes have trouble making prolonged eye
contact with another human — there’s this tendency to look away — but with
Kanzi I think we could have done it all day.

The facilities at the Great Ape Trust are splendid — lots of uncultivated
land where they can wander about and set up their own activities. I’ll be
reporting on all this in future posts. Meanwhile, here’s to Sue and the many
others at Great Ape Trust who are caring so kindly for these bonobos and
helping us understand their extraordinary capabilities.

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