Culture Prefigures Cognition in Pan/Homo Bonobos

Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is the first and only scientist doing language research with bonobos. She joined Great Ape Trust following a 23-year association with the Language Research Center (LRC) at Georgia State University. At the LRC, Savage-Rumbaugh helped pioneer the use of a number of new technologies for working with primates. Her breakthrough research with Kanzi – the first ape to learn language in the same manner as a child – has been documented in scientific publications and broadcasts throughout the world. The following is an excerpt from “Culture Prefigures Cognition in Pan/Homo Bonobos” by Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Dr. Pär Segerdhal and Mr. William Fields:

For more than three decades, a group of bonobos has been intentionally initiated into aspects of human culture by humans who live, eat, sleep, travel, speak and interact with them during continuous and direct physical interaction in an environment as free from cages as law will permit. These interactions are not those that typify most human/ape encounters. Thus these individuals are not treated in accordance with the common view of “ape as creature less than human but rather entities whose potential is vast and unrecognized by our current limited views.

To read the entire scientific article, click here.