Kanzi (born October 23, 1980), a bonobo, is one of the most most famous and accomplished linguistic apes, in research led by E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. October 23 is the 296th day of the year (297th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 69 days remaining. ... 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... Binomial name Pan paniscus Schwarz, 1929 The Bonobo (Pan paniscus), sometimes called the Pygmy Chimpanzee, is one of the two species comprising the genus Pan; both members of that genus are technically chimpanzees, though the term is frequently used to refer only to the other member of the genus, Pan... Families Hylobatidae Hominidae Apes are the members of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates, including humans. ...

Born to Lorel and Bosandjo at Yerkes field station at Georgia State University, Kanzi was stolen and adopted shortly after birth by a more dominant female, Matata. As an infant, Kanzi accompanied his mother to sessions where she was taught language through keyboard lexigrams, but displayed little interest in the lessons. It was a great surprise to researchers then when one day, while Matata was away, Kanzi began competently using the lexigrams, becoming not only the first observed ape to have learned aspects of language naturalistically rather than through direct training but also the first observed bonobo to use language at all. Within little time, Kanzi had mastered the ten that researchers had been struggling to teach his adoptive mother, and has since learned more than two hundred more. Also notable is Kanzi's ability to understand spoken language and associate it with lexigrams, Kanzi's ability to understand simple grammatical sentences, and possibly his invention of novel vocalized words. Georgia State University   © Georgia State University Georgia State University (GSU) is an urban research university in the heart of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Founded in 1913, it serves over 28,000 students, and is one of The University System of Georgias four research universities. ... A lexigram is a symbol that represents a word but is not necessarily indicative of the word by itself. ...

Kanzi is also a far more accomplished tool user and inventor than practically all other apes. (See September 1994 issue of Discover article, "Ape at the Brink")

Kanzi is Panbanisha's brother. Kanzi, her mother, brother, and sister now live at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, the only primate research center in the world dedicated to studying cognitive skills of all for types of primates. Panzee and Panbanisha are two apes with whom research is being carried out in the United States. ...

See also: Koko This article is about the gorilla. ...

External links

• Kanzi page (http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwlrc/biographies/kanzi.html) (with photos) at Georgia State University website.
• Bonobo language lexigrams (http://www.iowagreatapes.org/bonobo/language/) at Great Ape Trust website

Kanzi is also the Kunrei-shiki spelling of Kanji, which are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Kunrei-shiki (訓令式, Cabinet-ordered system) is a romanization system, that is, a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet. ... The characters for Kanji, lit. ... The Japanese language is a spoken and written language used mainly in Japan. ...