He can cook, play music, use a computer,make jokes, and skype, Kanzi is the world's cleverest chimpanzee

 

 He’s just had to sit through his offspring’s fourth birthday party, with the youngster tearing open his presents and jumping all over daddy’s head in his excitement. So I can understand the expression of weariness on Kanzi’s face when I ask him what he wants for lunch.

Then someone mentions the word ‘omelette’ — a Kanzi favourite, not just to eat but even to cook — and he’s off. He clambers on to a ledge in the viewing room of his concrete, steel and glass home and positions himself in front of a large, touch-sensitive computer screen showing a grid of some 400 symbols, or ‘lexigrams’, each representing a particular object or idea.

A huge forefinger skims dextrously over the icons, pressing the ones he wants. The computer voices his selections with an American accent.

He summons eggs, onions, lettuce, grapes, pineapple. His four-year-old son, Teco, comes up behind and presses ‘M&Ms’, pointing at a table behind me where, just visible, there is indeed a bag of the sweets.

Smart kid — he’ll go far.

‘Do you like M&Ms, Kanzi?’ I ask. Kanzi shoots me a withering look — one of many — that seems to say ‘What sort of bloody idiotic question is that?’

Not since I asked the actor Kevin Costner if it was true that he was in a relationship with the model  Carla Bruni has an interview been this tricky.

 

For years, this remarkable creature has been changing the way we humans think about our relatives in the animal world

Winningly charming and jaw-droppingly accomplished as he may be, this pygmy chimp (or bonobo) — a fire-starting, tool-making, marshmallow-toasting marvel of the animal world — isn’t going to make my job any easier.

And why should he? This remarkable creature is a superstar. For years he has been changing the way we humans think about our relatives in the animal world, and challenging our assumed superiority to them.

The bonobo is a more gentle and intelligent cousin of the chimpanzee. Its only natural homeland is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bonobos are our closest animal relative (sharing about 99 per cent of our DNA) and physically resemble our distant ancestors.

Kanzi, now 33, has been fully immersed in the human world, and the English language, since birth. Scientists who have studied Kanzi all his life say he possesses a vocabulary big enough to follow and contribute to simple conversations.
He has learned to ‘say’ about 500 words through the keyboard and understands about 3,000 of them. Equally importantly, he was the first primate who didn’t acquire language through direct training.

 

Feeding time: Kanzi eating straight from the pan

 Instead, much like a human child, he picked it up simply by listening as researchers tried to teach his foster mother. (Teco is now doing the same by watching his father.)

Through a mixture of observation and encouragement, Kanzi has also picked up an astonishing set of manual skills.

He can cook, make knives out of stone and play the arcade game Pac-Man (he can get past the first round — a feat beyond many humans). He and his similarly talented late sister, Panbanisha, once even jammed with British rock star Peter Gabriel, playing along on a keyboard as the former Genesis man played a synthesizer.

The recent BBC series Monkey Planet has sparked renewed fascination in this great ape after it demonstrated a stunning example of his capabilities.

Kanzi was filmed breaking up kindling for a fire, deftly sliding open a box of matches, striking one against the box and then lighting his fire. He then carefully threaded marshmallows on to a stick, toasted and ate them.

But what is this hairy boy scout like in person? I trekked out to his home in the American Midwest — a secluded compound set in 230 wooded acres — to find out.

Now the balding, paunchy patriarch of a seven-strong bonobo clan at the Ape Cognition And Conservation Initiative charity, Kanzi is courted by scientists from across the world and is still apparently adding to his repertoire of skills.
Sadly, he has to do it from behind glass nowadays. Until two years ago, the bonobos used to have much closer contact with people. But then Panbanisha died of pneumonia, apparently due to human contact.

His keepers told Kanzi in advance of my visit.

‘He’s very excited,’ says Tami Watson, a ‘care-giver’ for whom Kanzi clearly has a soft spot.

But before we can get anything like his undivided attention, he first has to officiate at his son’s birthday party. Little Teco rips apart a pinata box, the peanuts, grapes and toys spilling on to the floor of their airy recreation room. Kanzi hangs back to allow the young ape to enjoy most of the spoils. He then wanders over to meet me, clapping once loudly, which indicates he wants human company.

 

Kanzi cools off with water at the Ape Cognition And Conservation Initiative Charity in Des Moines, Iowa

I have been warned that Kanzi isn’t that forthcoming with people he’s only just met.

And he doesn’t like small-talk and rhetorical questions. He also prefers communicating with children to adults — perhaps they are more on his wavelength, given his vocabulary is that of a two-and-a-half-year-old.

Still, he graciously slumps down in front of me, separated by Plexiglas but able to hear everything we say thanks to microphones.
We’re soon choosing his lunch, and he proves he has excellent table manners. He has no trouble opening milk cartons with his teeth without spilling a drop