Traveling out of doors enriches bonobos’ lives, provides researchers more opportunities to study their cognitive abilities

Des Moines, Iowa – September 29, 2008 – For the seven bonobos living at Great Ape Trust of Iowa, the call of the great outdoors has been answered.

The outdoor play yard – a favorite retreat where the bonobos can climb trees, investigate the shoreline of Great Ape Trust’s 30-acre lake, make fire, knap stones into tools and search for hidden items such as food – was inaccessible for most of the summer due to significant flooding. Now, bonobos Kanzi, Panbanisha, Matata, Nyota, Nathan, Elikya and Maisha are spending parts of their days in the warm autumn sunshine.

The reopening of the bonobos’ outdoor yard means their lives are back to normal after floodwaters from the Des Moines River spilled over the 230-acre campus on June 10. A complex, alarm-based perimeter fence destroyed in the flood has been replaced by a simple electric fence that is more effective from a containment standpoint and less expensive.

Director of Bonobo Research William M. Fields and his staff explained to language-competent bonobos Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota that the fence was electrified and would deliver a shock if touched, and the only bonobo to test that information was Nathan. But Nathan only touched it once, Fields said, and since then, “there has been no challenge to the fence.”

Fields said the bonobos’ lives are greatly enriched by the opportunity to travel out of doors. As they enjoy the natural environment, they also give researchers glimpses of spontaneous interactions that offer data supporting Great Ape Trust’s scientific inquiry into the bonobos’ receptive competence for spoken English and other cognitive abilities.

Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota understand concepts of time such as “right now,” “later” and “yesterday,” and are able to communicate about outdoor activities first with human caretakers via the laminated lexigrams and then with the other bonobos, Fields said.

“We plan it all in the mornings and let them go out and stay as long as they want, then tell Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota on the lexigrams that it’s lunchtime, or time to go to the greenhouse or time to do research,” he said. “We tell the language-competent bonobos what we’re going to do next, and let them work that out among themselves. The bonobos have to compromise and do a little bit of everything, so they all get a little bit of what they want.”

As restoration of the yard continues, Fields is eager to have a video camera installed to record incidents that have scientific significance. For example, the bonobos don’t like the common garter snakes they encounter in their yard and have begun carrying sticks during their outdoor excursions. “They are planning,” Fields said, explaining the behavior. “They have had experiences with snakes, and they’re communicating about it and coordinating to keep the snakes at a distance.”

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence.  When completed, it will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.  Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing a unique educational experience about great apes.