World Bonobo Day: A Look At Two Apes That Talk

On World Bonobo Day — not uncoincidentally, celebrated on Feb. 14, the same day as Valentine’s Day — pause to remember Panbanisha, one of two ape-language superstars involved in a long-running, non-invasive research study. She died on Nov. 7, 2012, to the heartbreak of everyone who knew her — and that includes rock-and-roll stalwarts Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney, who played music with her.

But Panbanisha’s legacy lives on. In the native African language of Swahili, her name meant “cleave together for the purpose of contrast,” and it perfectly suited her. She and her human caretakers and friends lived in a parallel universe of sorts — not quite bonobo and not quite human — where extraordinary things happened every day. The DNA difference between us and bonobos is only about 2 percent.

Though not as famous as her half-brother Kanzi, Panbanisha was an ape language luminary in her own right. Together, they lifted the veil separating human and non-human primates with their ability to understand spoken English and engage in meaningful two-way conversations with humans using a picture-based language board. It’s important to note the pictures most often don’t resemble the words they represent.

The language study led by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh more than three decades ago made this among other important findings: Like human children, Kanzi and Panbanisha acquired language simply by being exposed to it. The scientist was trying to teach symbol-based language to Kanzi’s mother, Matata, but she wasn’t an apt student. But her adopted son Kanzi was at her side during the sessions and spontaneously began making lexigram utterances.

This conversation with Panbanisha stands out:

It was June 16, 2008, and floodwaters were inching toward Panbanisha and Kanzi’s home at the former Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. The power fence that separated a lake from the outdoor play yard where they and five other members of their family foraged and spent time just being bonobos.

The fence was popping and snapping as the rising water overtook it. Panbanisha reached for her Laminated version of the computer keyboard and pointed frantically at the pictures for “big,” “water,” “electric shock” and “play yard.” What made her response remarkable wasn’t just that she understood cause and effect, but also that she participated in the flood response as surely as the humans scurrying around her.

In another charming but manipulative chapter in her life, Panbanisha used the keyboard to ask — demand is probably a better word — the communications staff at the scientific research institute to fetch low-fat, decaf caramel macchiato drinks before she would show off her intelligence to visiting media. She improvised with symbols for “candy” and “coffee,” demonstrating her cleverness. The baristas at a local Starbucks understood this and once questioned when iced macchiatos were ordered. “Does Panbanisha like them that way?” he asked.

She loved to tell secrets. She had her own kitchen, where she made tea and burritos. She picked names for people, like a member of the Great Ape Trust staff who always had a camera. “Camera,” she would “say” by pointing at the lexigram, usually followed by some silly request like "hide" or "chase." She loved to gather kindling and start campfires, thread marshmallows on a stick, roast them and eat them, daintily dabbing her mouth with a napkin as she looked over her shoulder with veiled eyes, as if to say, “Did you see that?”

Kanzi and four other members of this famous bonobo family — matriarch Elikya, Nyota and their son, Teco, and Elikya’s brother, Maisha — live comfortably in Des Moines, Iowa, at the facility now known as the Ape Cognition and Conservation Institute, which takes amazing care of them. Though certainly more pampered than bonobos in the wild in that they don’t have to forage for their meals of fresh fruits and vegetables and don’t face perils from hunters in their habitat, their social order isn’t much different.

In the wild, bonobos are found exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are threatened with extinction — a plight World Bonobo Day aims to affect. Because they live deep in the jungle in a country that’s considered one of the world’s most dangerous, the count on how many remain isn’t exact, but it’s estimated at as many as 50,000 or as few as 15,000. The main threat to their survival are bushmeat hunting and the illegal pet trade.

World Bonobo Day is celebrated on Valentine’s Day because bonobos are at their core peaceful and loving. Bonobos are sometimes referred to as the “hippie ape” because recreational sex — between males and females, but also with bonobos of their own gender — plays such an important part in their social order. Sex, sometimes called the “bonobo handshake," is used to resolve conflicts, occurs before meal sharing and is almost constant among bonobos.

One other important difference between bonobos and the three other types of great ape — gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans — is that they are female dominated. Bonobos split from chimpanzees about 2 million years ago. Though literally next-door neighbors with only a river separating them, bonobos didn’t have to fight the same predators as chimpanzees, which lead more solitary lives, and formed close relationships with unrelated females.

Visitors at seven zoos in the country can see this dynamic in action. All are participants in the Species Survival Program, an important line of defense against their extinction.

They are:

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden in Cincinnati, Ohio: Click here to see the zoo’s bonobo page.

Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Columbus, Ohio: Click here to see the zoo’s bonobo page.

Fort Worth Zoo in Fort Worth, Texas: Click here to see the zoo’s World of Primates page.

Jacksonville Zoo in Jacksonville, Florida: Click here to see the zoo’s bonobo page.

Memphis Zoo in Memphis, Tennessee: Click here to see the zoo’s bonobo page.

Milwaukee County Zoo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Click here to see the zoo’s list of animals.

San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California: Click here to see the zoo’s bonobo page.

Below, watch Panbanisha play music with Peter Gabriel:

Lead photo of Panbanisha by Beth Dalbey for the former Great Ape Trust.

Editor’s note: Before she joined Patch in 2011, Beth Dalbey worked as communications editor at the former Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, for three years. She describes her years there as her “Wonder Years."