Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind

by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

  Behavior is nothing more than, and nothing less than, changes in patterns of action that take place only in the domain of time. Chemical reactions by contrast, though they may require time, are transmutations of inanimate compounds in the spatial domain. That is, they are structural alterations that manifest themselves on a physical plane. Behaviors manifest themselves on the temporal plane. While they may require chemical alterations within the nervous system to drive them, the patterns of behavior are neither explainable nor fully predictable by those chemical reactions—for they are always in a constant state of flux as responses to the changing environment that surrounds the organism.

  For most organisms with a complex nervous system, the world is experienced as a constantly altering series of events. Though some events may seem similar to previous experiences, in the real world, unlike the laboratory, they are never really the same. The organism must constantly adjust to a new state of affairs and select the behavioral options that are most appropriate. Decisions that put certain options into play will themselves alter the range of options available in the immediate and distant future. All organisms with complex nervous systems are faced with the moment-by-moment question that is posed by life: What shall I do next?

  The world out there is never precisely the same from one moment to the next; consequently, the behavior that occurs in response to perceived events can never be the same, nor should it be, if the organism is functioning in a normal manner. Only when behavior becomes abnormal do organisms engage in repetitive patterns of behavior that do not take into account the constant environmental changes around them. When we see this happen, we call such patterns stereotypies and recognize that they are abnormal. Yet, in our attempts to follow the models of physics and chemistry, many laboratory studies of behavior unwittingly create behaviors that are analogous to stereotypies. In our attempts to present the same stimulus conditions across repeated trials, we destroy the very phenomenon we set out to study.

  As long as behavioral scientists follow in the footsteps of Descartes, assuming that nonhuman animals are merely robots made of meat and bone, they will refuse to give up their paradigms built upon the methods of physics and chemistry.

  Using these models, they will continue to come up with experimentally solid and verifiable scientific data to support their initial hypothesis. Indeed, their very goal will be to design experiments to support these hypotheses. In so doing, behavioral scientists do not, as did Einstein, look and wonder at physical phenomena out there in the world. By the design of their laboratory and their apparatus, they inadvertently create the animals’ physical world, thereby limiting the potential responses even before they frame their hypothesis. It would be as if Einstein had designed space and time and, having done so, arrived at the theory of relativity and then decided to test it.

  The physical world that surrounds us is of a different order from the animal world. The greater the degree of development of the nervous system, the more these two worlds differ in kind. The purpose of complex nervous systems is to permit flexible actions, unique to each situation. To the extent that organisms take in environmental information and make decisions about future actions, they become increasingly different from inanimate matter and require different paradigms for their study.

  Once organisms have developed nervous systems sufficiently complex to postulate presumed goals and/or intentions for other living creatures, a world based on the moment-by-moment interpretations of the intent of others will arise. That is, it will be the presumed intent behind the behavior, rather than the specific actions themselves, that will mold the response of the observer. Certainly, humans and apes have entered the world of interpreted intent, and I suspect that a number of other animals have done so as well.

  Some students of animal behavior have sought to escape the limitations posed by the laboratory by engaging in fieldwork. They rightly argue that by observing an animal in its natural habitat, one does not arbitrarily constrain the range of options available to it. The view that the behavior of animals is fundamentally different from that of man nonetheless manages to hold sway, even among those who do field observations. This is, in part, because a special language has been devised to describe and label behaviors of animals in nature. This devised language carefully avoids using any terms that we would apply to similar human behaviors. The taboo against using terms reserved for humans to describe the behavior of animals becomes most apparent when we observe apes. If a chimpanzee frowns and presses his lips together in a display of anger, either feigned or real, fieldworkers do not say he was mad; they say he displayed a bulged lips face. When he smiles and hugs another animal after a fisticuffs, they say he displayed an open-mouth bared-teeth grin and an arm around. Field researchers are admonished to speak in this manner in order to avoid the bugbear of anthropomorphism—the act of attributing human emotions to animals.

  Consequently, out of fear that we might see a humanlike emotion where it does not exist, we design ways of speaking that permit us to talk about animal behavior without attributing any humanlike emotion to the animals whatsoever. We therefore approach the study of the animal mind with the unwritten assumption that it would be an error of the greatest magnitude if we were to conclude wrongly, in any circumstance, that an animal (even one that shares 99 percent of our DNA) felt as we do when angry or happy. Thus, even when we observe the animal in nature, the way we are taught as scientists to ask our questions, to structure our data, and to discuss what we see, constrains the conclusions we permit ourselves to find.

  What if we were to assume at least partial continuity of emotional expression and intelligence between animals and man and thus permit ourselves to talk about animal behavior in a new light? We might risk the error of sometimes attributing capacities that did not exist, but we would surely find humanlike capacities that do exist but are currently hidden from us by the blinders we press over our eyes. Would the error of sometimes erroneously attributing capacities that did not exist be greater than that of never discovering any emotional or intellectual capacities that were continuous with our own? I think not. At the very least, if one scientist made a mistake and attributed some capacity to an animal that was far beyond its true ability, another scientist would come along and correct this mistake. As the situation currently stands, we don’t even have the right to make the mistake. We should be able to ask questions about how animals perceive their worlds, their roles in those worlds, and what kinds of events or relationships alter these perceptions. It seems to me that this is what a science of animal behavior should be about.

  I am not the first to suggest that we need to look at animal behavior through a different lens. Donald Griffin has been urging us to do so since the 1970s. Why are so many behavioral scientists still unable to break out of their constraints? The problem lies in part in the omniscience we attribute to the human mind, an omniscience that we believe is made possible by the gift of language. Even students of behavior who would not deny minds to animals nonetheless maintain there is no way of gaining access to the animal mind; consequently, they believe the issue is, like that of religious experience, beyond science. I suggest that we expand our ways of doing science to encompass such questions.

  The essence of the difference between the human and the animal mind is often claimed to be that man can reflect upon his actions while animals, lacking words, cannot. Crucial to this view is the underlying and unspoken premise that language is the only possible means of reflection. Without language how can we ask an animal what it is thinking? And without language how can it tell us? And if it cannot tell us, how can we legitimately assume that it is thinking?

  Once, while riding in the car through the woods with Kanzi’s sister Panbanisha, I noted she appeared to be very quiet and pensive. I was moved to ask her what she was thinking—a question I generally avoid since I have no means of validating the answer, nor even of determining if an ape understands the question. Occasionally, when I have posed this question in the past, I have gen
erally been ignored. However, at this moment Panbanisha looked literally lost in thought, and so I dared. She seemed to reflect upon the question a few seconds and then answered “Kanzi.” I was very surprised, as she almost never uses Kanzi’s name. I replied, “Oh, you are thinking about Kanzi, are you?” and she vocalized in agreement, “Whuh, whuh, whuh.”

  Similarly, one time I was riding in a car with Heather, one of the normal children in our project, through the very same area of woods. Heather was two years of age and just beginning to form sentences. She, like Panbanisha, typically ignored questions like “What are you thinking about?” But, like Panbanisha, at this moment she appeared lost in thought and so I dared to inquire. She replied “Mommy.” I asked, “Do you wish your Mommy was here?” and she nodded her head.

  I cannot be certain that either Panbanisha or Heather was really thinking. Currently there is no way to establish scientific consensus regarding the inner thoughts of another person. Yet it seems that credence should be given to the fact that both Heather and Panbanisha, on occasions when they appeared pensive, elected to answer the question. On other occasions, when they were engaged in other activities, the question was ignored as though it were nonsensical. These observations suggest that it is possible that children and apes think in a reflexive sense, even before they are competent language users. Could it be that they think in some way other than with words?

  Thought, or the manipulation of one’s mental model of the world, surely must take place in the absence of language, utilizing neurological machinery that services the channels of perception through which the world is viewed. It requires but a moment’s reflection to recognize that humans engaged in complex nonverbal activities—such as in dance, music, sculpting, and athletic skills—depend on wordless thought. To suggest otherwise “is a notion that only a college professor or other professional wordsmith could have ever taken seriously.”1

  Mary Midgely, the British philosopher of science, puts the issue more generally: “If language were really the only source of conceptual order, all animals except man would live in a totally disordered world. They could not be said to vary in intelligence, since they could not have the use of anything that could reasonably be called intelligence at all… . The truth seems to be that—even for humans—a great deal of the order in the world is pre-verbally determined, being the gift of faculties we share with other animals.”2 Nonhuman animals quite evidently live in ordered worlds, an outcome of their own cognitive processes. Without such mental ordering, the management of the myriad interactions among other members of a community and the efficient exploitation of a diverse resource base would be nearly impossible. There is no question that language enhances thought processes, permitting a more intricate and powerful manipulation of mental worlds. But this is surely an extension of faculties already in place, not the establishment of something novel. Spoken language, and the thoughts it mediates, is built on the same neurological foundation that underlies thinking in nonhuman animals.

  The apes I know behave every living, breathing moment as though they have minds that are much like my own. They may not think about as many things, or in the depth that I do, and they may not plan as far ahead as I do. Apes make tools and coordinate their actions during the hunting of prey, such as monkeys. But no ape has been observed to plan far enough ahead to combine the skills of tool construction and hunting for a common purpose. Such activities were a prime factor in the lives of early hominids. These greater skills that I have as a human being are the reason that I am able to construct my own shelter, earn my own salary, and follow written laws. They allow me to behave as a civilized person but they do not mean that I think while apes merely react.

  Although I gain a fuller understanding of the thoughts of apes when they elect to use the keyboard, it is possible, even without words, to perceive much of what they are thinking. More important, one does not need to be especially intuitive or insightful to do so. One simply needs to be observant of their behaviors and receptive of their communications, while recognizing that these communications take into account our common knowledge of the surrounding events—a sort of joint awareness that leads to joint perception and joint knowing.

  This sort of joint understanding of the world around us would be as difficult with a species whose perceptual capacities are unlike our own as Thomas Nagel argues. Dolphins can inspect space by sound, seeing things underwater that are not apparent to us. Similarly, dogs can hear and smell things that are invisible to us. Therefore it is difficult for us to make sense of many of their actions, as we do not experience the influx of information from the world as they do. However, if we did experience the world in the same manner, it seems to me likely that the processes we call “making sense of that information” would not be too dissimilar.

  Fortunately for those of us working with apes, they sense the world much as we do. Their vision, hearing, sense of smell, and so on are all very much like our own. Consequently, what gains my attention is often the same as what gains theirs. For example, when walking in the woods with both chimps and dogs, I once spied a deer from 100 meters when we were in an area where the vegetation had sporadic clearings. When Panbanisha saw me look intently in the direction of the deer, she followed my glance and immediately saw the deer. The dogs, however, did not follow my glance and thus did not see the deer. Because Panbanisha and I readily and quickly follow each other’s glances and because our visual systems are similarly constructed, she and I developed a joint knowledge of the deer’s presence that was shared at once by us, but not by the dogs. Once she had seen the deer, she met my glance to determine my reaction.

  There are also times when the dogs perceive things that elude both myself and Panbanisha. One evening we were walking in the woods at dusk when both dogs suddenly growled fiercely and turned toward something just off the trail. The dogs did not glance at either of us, though they did glance at each other. Neither Panbanisha nor I had heard or seen anything that was alarming. Straining to look in the direction of the dog’s orientation, we both dimly made out the shadowy outline of a large feline perched on the branch of a tree. I do not know how the dogs discerned the presence of the big cat, but I do know that Panbanisha saw it just as I did. We immediately looked at each other and her hair stood out three inches around her body; mine did also. No words were needed for us to understand what the other had seen, nor to share the other’s sense of apprehension. It also seemed obvious to both of us that the direction to head was back to the lab. We needed no words.

  Once we returned to the laboratory, Kanzi, Matata, and Panzee seemed aware that something had frightened us. They also inferred that it had happened to us outside in the woods from whence we had just come. This was apparent because after taking one look at us they strained to look out into the darkness and made the soft “whu-uh” sounds that signal something unusual. Panbanisha vocalized toward them, as if to tell them about the big cat we saw in the woods. Matata, Kanzi, Tamuli, Panzee, and Neema all listened and responded in kind with very loud vocalizations of their own. Did she tell them something in sounds I could not decode? I don’t know. I then relayed the story in my own way, with spoken language, to Kanzi and Panzee, as I knew they could understand something of what I said. Both of them listened with rapt attention and huge round eyes. At appropriate points during my recounting Panbanisha embellished my tale with bonobo “Waa” vocalizations, as though to add her own emphasis.

  Did they understand what was said or where this had happened to us? I cannot be certain, of course, but both Kanzi and Panzee displayed hesitation and fear in that precise area of the woods the next time they were permitted to go out. Since they had never been frightened there before, it seemed that they must have understood something of what had happened.

  Of course, one can conclude little on the basis of this situation alone; however, there are many others, each different. Only by looking at a large number of such situations can one begin to understand whether apes are capable of communicating such
complex information. For it is not just a single event such as this that suggests communications of complex information are being achieved, but many other events, each unique and impossible to replicate without sacrificing the novelty of the setting and hence the impetus for communication.

  A very different sort of example occurred one afternoon as I was playing with Matata and her daughter Tamuli, who knows no language. Tamuli asked for my keys by pointing to them and looking at my face with a questioning expression. She then played with them for perhaps thirty minutes before dropping them and becoming interested in some toys I had brought for her. When I was ready to leave I forgot to retrieve my keys. As soon as I walked out of Tamuli’s room, Kanzi, who was in an adjacent area, asked to visit Matata and Tamuli himself.

  I was about to unlock the door between their rooms when I realized I could not do so because I did not have my keys. I turned to Tamuli and asked her to look for the keys, not really thinking that she would understand or cooperate. To my surprise she set about at once looking under all the toys and blankets to try to find my keys. When she discovered them, she rushed over and showed them to me, but refused to let me have them back. I coaxed and cajoled for fifteen minutes, offering to trade many prized items for them, but to no avail. I could see that she was not going to give back the keys.