Kanzi the bonobo, who learned language, made stone tools, and played Minecraft, dies at age 44. What can his remarkable linguistic abilities teach us about language? For a written version of this video with sources, visit the newsletter: https://linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/kanzi/ Ape Initiative: https://www.apeinitiative.org/ Further Reading Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind https://amzn.to/3DVL6YL Baboon metaphysics: The evolution of a social mind https://amzn.to/40Et0Sr If you en

To primatologists around the world, Kanzi was a star. After years of training with sign language and a specialized keyboard, the 44-year-old bonobo had gained an unusually sophisticated understanding of human words, making him the focus of decades of research into nonhuman primates’ language abilities. But Christopher Krupenye, a cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University, wanted to test something different: Kanzi’s imagination. In March 2025, Krupenye and his colleagues acted out a version