He can cook, play music, use a computer - and make sarcastic jokes chatting with his 3,000-word vocabulary: My lunch with the world's cleverest chimp (who Skyped me later for another chat)

Feeding time: Kanzi eating straight from the pan

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.

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.

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

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.

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.



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

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.

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.

He stares hard at me.

‘As opposed to monkeys and even ordinary chimps, when you look at a bonobo’s eyes, you can tell there’s someone at home,’ says Steve Boers, the charity’s executive director. I know what he means as my eyes lock with Kanzi’s deep-set but warm brown eyes, sparkling with intelligence. It’s unnerving talking to an animal in the expectation that they will actually answer you. In English.

Kanzi’s carers believe he understands every word they say to him. They make no attempt to talk slowly to him or carefully enunciate every word.

Kanzi is able to break up kindling for a fire, deftly sliding open a box of matches, striking one against the box and then lighting his fire

Although bonobos don’t have the vocal chords to reproduce human speech, some believe Kanzi can use specific words.

Dr Jared Taglialatela, an animal behaviourist and one of two scientists who study the Iowa bonobos regularly, videotaped Kanzi for hundreds of hours.

He claims he identified four distinct sounds, corresponding to ‘banana’, ‘grape’, ‘juice’ and ‘yes’. But what’s most extraordinary about Kanzi is that he doesn’t just use words for objects such as ‘food’ and ‘toy’ or verbs such as ‘run’ and ‘eat’.

A glance at the lexigrams on his speechboard shows Kanzi can use what researchers call ‘concept words’.

They include emotions such as ‘happy’ and ‘sorry’, prepositions such as ‘on’ and verbs in different tenses such as ‘is’ and ‘was’.

He can actually construct complete sentences and show emotions including empathy.

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

Tami Watson recalled how Kanzi recently saw her slipping over. ‘He told me to ‘be careful’,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t believe it, so I asked him again. He repeated: ‘Careful. Careful. Careful.’ Kanzi can even be sarcastic. Asked if he is ready to do something, he will sometimes reply: ‘Past ready.’

And Kanzi’s vocabulary is apparently growing. His carers say he keeps having to make up compound words for things that aren’t on his lexigram pad, such as ‘slow lettuce’ for kale (‘slow’ because it takes him a long time to chew it) and ‘potato surprise’ for ‘crisps’.

Sadly, he doesn’t seem that interested in enlarging his vocabulary with me. After five minutes staring at each other and Kanzi refusing to answer any of my questions, he goes to the screen and presses ‘ball’ — indicating a large green ball that he loves to play with.

A bad sign, I feel.

After I fail to give him the ball, he goes back to the screen and taps twice on it: ‘Ball. Now.’

Yes, you can add ‘impatience’ to the list of bonobo emotions.

It’s then suggested that I ask if Kanzi wants to play the ‘cooler game’ — his own invention — with me. He nods vigorously.

A picnic ice-box is placed in front of me with a box of raisins hidden inside. Kanzi then has to hide his eyes while I place it somewhere out of sight and he sends one of the centre’s staff to find it and ‘surprise’ him with the contents.

He cheats shamelessly, uncovering his eyes before I’ve even got half way across the room, but we’ve bonded at last.

Kanzi finally gets the ball, too — wandering out to scream to the other bonobos to come and see. And then he puckers his lips and kisses me through the glass.

‘Happy’, he taps on the screen.

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.

As Kanzi sits silently contemplating us as he munches a pear, it’s clear he’s not going to be making a fire today or offering to cook me dinner.

Of course, in this politically correct age, his life under the scientific microscope has raised ethical questions. But what if Kanzi was released into the wild?

‘I don’t think he’d survive long, even in a zoo,’ says Steve Boers. ‘Maybe he’d use his skills to help his family survive, but they’re rather spoilt here.’

Yes, but I can’t help feeling they deserve it.



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

The centre staff gather round to sing Happy Birthday. The idea is that little Teco blows through the glass and extinguishes a single candle on a cupcake held by Tami.

But he doesn’t want to. It’s about to go out when, just in time, Kanzi — who can play the harmonica and blow up balloons — bounds over and does the honours.

It’s all been an exhausting day for Kanzi, who points at the television screen on our side of the glass and settles down for some viewing. A glance through the bonobos’ DVD collection reveals natural history programmes about them, Sesame Street and Tarzan. There’s also The Addams Family.

‘They love being scared and scaring each other,’ says Tami.

‘If they don’t like one of the maintenance men, they ask us to dress up in a costume and then pretend to frighten them.’

Julie Gilmore, their vet, wishes all her patients were like Kanzi. ‘He opens his mouth for me when I ask and turns his back to me so I can listen to him with a stethoscope,’ she says. ‘And he actually likes his medicine.’

Kanzi blows me another kiss as I leave — he doesn’t do waves, apparently — but he wasn’t finished with me.

Kanzi loves chatting on the video-calling service Skype. Two days later, I hear from Iowa. Kanzi wants to see my home and particularly the contents of the fridge.

He doesn’t seem particularly impressed by my supplies — ‘too healthy’, says Tami kindly — but, as they say, he’s one spoilt bonobo.

In Swahili, Kanzi means ‘buried treasure’ — a quality this creature has in buckets.

Threatened by poaching and the destruction of their habitat, bonobos are an endangered species in the wild.