Book Review: Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
This book makes plausible claims that some bonobos have learned to handle language in a way that is approximately as sophisticated as that of a two year old human. But their anecdotal evidence is somewhat hard to evaluate, and they didn’t quite convince me that they were careful enough to rule out the possibility that their biases caused them to overestimate the sophistication of Kanzi’s understanding.
The book is a bit long-winded about research that Savage-Rumbaugh did before working with Kanzi, and I was a bit disappointed that the book didn’t provide more of the anecdote about Kanzi that made the book worth reading. But those anecdotes convinced me that much more is going on than some authors such as Pinker had led me to believe. I still hope for better evidence that will help clarify how much bonobos can understand. But that will be hard, and I don’t know how it should be done.