Behavioral research – Bonobo Kanzi: one of us

Dear readers: Bonobo Kanzi has died!

In all courtesy, we would like to ask for a minute’s silence and your sympathy at this point, hoping that you may not be able to assign this Bonobo Kanzi directly, but because he appears here for an important festival manager, philosopher or Nobel prize candidate and therefore assured: Bonobo Kanzi was one of us, culture. At least as good as. Bonobo Kanzi has become an impressive 45 years old, and his life and his work held the mirror as long as he was there.

Bonobo Kanzi, acquaintance under his nickname Kanzi, spoke about as well in English as the common Germans, 3000 passive vocabulary was available to him, Kanzi made new tools from branches, stones and deer fragments, he has culturally grown and extensively used the use of microwave equipment and extensively the computer game “Minecraft” played; Kanzi, like so many, can hardly see a difference between his job – Bonobo Kanzi – and his private life: Either way, he couldn’t avoid sitting in batik clothes for many hours of his life, who pursued each of his emotions and made notes. Kanzi has acquired a certain pain belly over the years (and questionable early on in his professional life), which he then had to train with the help of a team of consultants. As far as we know, he did it without complaining.

Oh yes, and Kanzi was of course a bonobo, we mentioned that, so a close relative of them, dear readers, from the author of these lines, and from gorillas and chimpanzees. Whereby, among us primates: who still believes in boundaries between species? They are just a mental construct that does not finally convince the enlightened spirit. Because what is an animal species? We still know it from school: the same way is everyone who can reproduce together and whose descendants are equally reproductive.

If we break it down to the core family, it follows logically: You always belong to the way your parents also belong. These in turn belong to the same way as their parents, your grandparents, like your great -grandparents … So it goes down to the deepest depths of evolutionary history. So we belong to the same way as the knobby fish, which was swallowed ashore 365 million years ago, our original UR-UR-UM-MOMA. These squirrel -like fur racks then come from it, who ran the dinosaurs between their feet and from which horses, rhinos, komodowarans, all possible shaggy animals developed, and they, dear readers, developed.

And you shouldn’t be sad now?

Rest in peace, Bonobo Kanzi, you were one of us. You never announced what you wanted to achieve on earth. Have sacrificed your short span on earth in science, never lived your bonobo life. But does anyone of us live the Stone Age life for which they are created with Siesta, game, javelin throw and campfire in the evening? We will honor Kanzi, and we will try to do justice to your legacy: no wars. Hardly violence. 3000 vocabulary, now and then a banana. And from time to time, when it fits, to the gym. But rather longer lunch break, that’s much healthier anyway.