Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (27 page)

Austin watches carefully as Sherman opens the lock.

Sherman (left) takes half of the food back to Austin (he tastes Austin’s portion on the way).

Sherman passes Austin’s portion to him through the opening in the window.

This is one of the indoor rooms where Kanzi now plays and works when he cannot go outside. It includes a television with an attached joystick and two keyboards mounted in study racks. On the floor is a bin of objects and photographs for Kanzi. (
Photograph by Steve Winters)

Austin watches a videotape of himself. (
Photograph by Elizabeth Pugh)

Working with Kanzi at the keyboard. (
Photograph by Steve Winters)

In one of the early blind test formats presented to Kanzi, experimenter A (with back turned) places three photographs inside a gray plastic “text booklet” and then passes the closest booklet to experimenter B (facing Kanzi). Experimenter A then plays a tape-recorded word to Kanzi. The word is randomly chosen from Kanzi’s suspected vocabulary. When Kanzi hears the word, he gesturally asks experimenter B to open the test booklet and show him the photographs. Kanzi looks over the options, selecting the one that corresponds to the word he heard on his headphones. After Kanzi makes his selection, experimenter B tells Kanzi whether or not he is correct. In this example, Kanzi has selected a photograph of fire, and when experimenter B turns over the answer card, she finds the word
fire. (Photographs by Nicholas Nichols)

Kanzi often enjoys drawing and painting. Sometimes he labels his drawings, but as yet he has not achieved sufficient skill to produce recognizable images—a skill that also eludes most children under the age of three. (
Photograph by Steve Winters)

Kanzi plays grab, tickle, and chase with Jeannine’s son, Nathaniel, who has learned lexigrams himself. Yerkes veterinarians do not permit apes to interact directly with children for fear of transmission of childhood diseases, so they are separated here by a plastic barrier. (
Photograph by Nicholas Nichols)

Kanzi bashes one stone against another to produce a small sharp-edged flake which he will use to cut through a thick nylon rope holding tight a cover on a box filled with a favorite food. (
Photograph by Nicholas Nichols)

This panel represents one quarter of the symbols on Kanzi’s keyboard. By the time Kanzi was seven years of age, he comprehended three-quarters of the symbols on his 256-symbol keyboard, though he regularly used only about half of them. Symbols he did not learn were very abstract, such as “away,” or for things that he rarely encountered, such as pomegranate. From left to right, the symbols stand for: Bad, Now, Dessert, Tummy, Bowl, Monster, Coconut, Towel, Taco, Chicken, Lettuce, Noodles, Sugar, Bunny, Burrito, Butter, Away, Slap, Salt, Observation room, Trash, Perrier, Bottom, Strawberry, Kiwi, Pillow, Pomegranate, Grapes, Privet berries, Panzee, Pinkey, Yogurt, River, Jello, Lana, Backpack, Koolaide, Wipie, Noise, Popsicle, Swimming pool, Panbanisha, Cold, Draw, Middle test room, Carry, Shop, Thank you, Karen, Honeysuckle, Toy, Dan, Gorilla, unassigned, Book, unassigned. (
Photograph
©
Language Research Center, Georgia State University)

Here Kanzi and I are at Lookout Point in November when it is starting to get fairly chilly. Kanzi has just told me he wants to go on to Flatrock to look for M&Ms and for a ball. (
Photograph by Nicholas Nichols)