Kanzi Research - 1980-1993

This was the first research initiative to use bonobos in language investigations. It began with a wild-caught female named Matata and her adopted son Kanzi. Kanzi was a nine month old baby playing in the lab while Savage-Rumbaugh tried to teach his mother language. Kanzi was not a focus of the research because scientists thought him too young to learn these skills. When baby Kanzi was briefly separated by his mother, he began spontaneously to demonstrate productive competence for lexigrams and receptive competence for spoken English (something Matata had not achieved through direct training). Kanzi’s acquisition of productive and receptive competence emerged following passive observational exposure.

Later, as his language complex matured, Savage-Rumbaugh demonstrated that Kanzi’s utterances included grammar, syntax, and semanticity. It also seemed that his language skill enhanced his ability to learn other skills, such as the manufacture of Oldowan-type rock tools. Kanzi’s receptive competence for spoken English contrasted dramatically with the failure of the chimpanzees Sherman and Austin to do likewise.

What was the basis for the difference between the language skills displayed by bonobo Kanzi and the chimpanzees? Savage-Rumbaugh had clearly demonstrated in Kanzi that language could be acquired spontaneously and observationally without planned training; that comprehension precedes production and drives language acquisition; and that early exposure to language can greatly improve the level of competency attained.