Meet the Chimp That Learned to Build Fires After Watching TV
- Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:27am by
Liz Klimas
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Researchers at the Great Ape Trust have found Kanzi, a bonobo, unlike other chimpanzees they are observing. He has an obsession with building fires.
Ever since he watched Quest For Fire, which he has seen more than 100 times, Kanzi has learned to successfully perform tasks to help build fires.
Here Kanzi is snapping a stick to make smaller for a fire.
Kanzi builds a pile of wood for a fire. (Photo via Daily Mail)
The Daily Mail reports Kanzi is one of eight pigmy chimpanzees being researched by Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh with the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Iowa. Savage-Rumbaugh says that other chimps she has studied have tried to make fire, but none have been as successful as Kanzi.
Kanzi had trouble learning how to properly how to use a lighter, but he knows now.
Watch Kanzi help crack sticks, build, light, roast marshmallows and snuff out the fire:
Savage-Rumbaugh, who was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, is studying the animals to learn more about early human learning and believes Kanzi building fire is a sign of a greater intelligence. The Daily Mail reports that Kanzi is one of the more intelligent apes being researched at the Great Ape Trust. He has learned to communicate with researchers using pictures that he points to on a keyboard, knowing more than 500 words. Researchers believe he can understand more than 3,000 word spoken to him.
Here’s Kanzi showing off his lexicon skills a few years ago:
Kanzi shows how he understands sentences in this clip:
The scientists make sure to supervise Kanzi when he is building fires for his safety. According to the Great Ape Trust, Kanzi and other bonobos were recently filmed for a BBC documentary called “Animal Einsteins,” tentatively scheduled to air in 2012 in the U.K. and at a later date in the U.S.
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Comments (181)
triumphguy
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:59amGet you ad off of here. Not appropriate. And if this is such a good deal, why are you not doing it?
Report Post »thegreatcarnac
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:59amMy thoughts exactly…lol.
Report Post »Canada_Goose
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:59amSometimes I think the Blaze picks stories just for the purpose of eliciting racist comments from readers.
This is not really that that impressive given previous projects with chimps. Project Nim for instance where Nim the chimp learned 125 ASL signs and was able to communicate with the researchers. He was actually recorded forming a 16 word quotation – “Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you.”
For all you “intelligent designers” – 98.7% of human and chimp DNA is identical.
Report Post »TEXMAN
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 1:20pmThat might mean something if over 98% of our DNA wasn’t known as genetic junk. I know one theory is it’s there to protect us from diseases.
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 6:33pmTexman, one may say that someone‘s junk is another’s treasure trove.
The large “stuttering” segment of DNA was considered a junk because it was not apparent what is its function. It doesn’t code for protein, thus from a strictly mechanistical/reductionist position it’s useless.
However, that position is being revised. It seems that the segment contains keys to certain other functions and triggers, and there are several layers of keys present, within each other. If you transposed it into sonic vibrations, the whole thing played would sound something like JS Bach’s compositions.
One of the ideas postulates that one of the layers of keys provides for a stability of the protein coding segments, a form of a compressed backup that the replication mechanism can access in order to introduce corrective steps if things get too effed up due to mutations that would throw the whole system into a rapid decay and resulting in death (of the cell).
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 7:18pm&he 98.7% figure is … ahm… an euphemism of sorts. We share 76% of our DNA with cabbage. It does not necessarily mean that cabbage may be capable of tying shoe laces.
Here is the problem… in order to derive these figures, the DNA of a species is unzipped and then broken down into very small segments and that is then “stirred” together with another species DNA and then the result (pairing-completion of the segments code bases) is measured.
It‘s conceptually similar to cutting groups of four letters from different languages’ newspapers and comparing the results, trying to derive commonalities. There would be a degree of actual commonalities discovered, but also a substantial portion would be a set of arbitrary “semi-words” that are meaningless and have just a statistical correlation.
The only factual comparison can be done when you map an entire genome of one species (several members so you can get a good result for inner divergence) and compare it to another, chromosome by chromosome, codon by codon.
BTW, the commonality (and thus the divergence inversion of 3%) of the human genome is presently estimated at 97%. It must be then apparent to you that the chimp figure of 98.7% sharing is bogus, it only expresses the amount of codon segments that paired together.
We have a very unique set of chromosomes, so far no other species with the same pattern beside H o m o branch has been discovered as far as I know. Our 2nd and 3rd chromosomes are fused t
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 7:22pm… fused together.
Report Post »EchoHawk
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:58amAnother POS story to incite the adolescent circle jerk for Blazers. I’d put my money on the monkey against any of you degenerate pukes.
Report Post »KickinBack
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:52pmYou’ve signed up. You’ve commented. Congratulations! You’re a Blazer! How does it feel to be a “degenerative puke”?
Report Post »texasfireguy
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 1:12pmOhhh he got served
Report Post »smokeysmoke
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 2:43pmalways wondered if people like you get paid by media matters to come post idiocy, and racist remarks in an attempt to try and make the blaze look bad; have you ever read huff post comments, they are so racist and I do not make an account there cause it’s trash… What’s your deal bro
Report Post »EchoHawk
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 4:09pmYou aren’t that bright are you kickinback, the monkey flickinfeces beat you again, thank for proving my point.
Report Post »This_Individual
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:55amPoor thing, now were turning chimps into mindless zombies?
Report Post »nomark
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 2:48pmIt’s just a matter of time before liberals try to register them to vote.
Report Post »qpwillie
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:53am@jennie87yt
Is your buddy’s step sister a bonobo?
You spammers are like Paulies. You don’t care what the topic is. You just post your ads anywhere.
Report Post »EchoHawk
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:50amIs that what passes for clever where your from? You must be lower echelon.
Report Post »JLGunner
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:47amBogus.
Report Post »COFemale
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:55amWhy do you say bogus? Is the Chimp smarter than you because he can start fire and you can’t?
Some people refuse to see what is in front of their faces. Chimps share 99% of our DNA, therefore they are the ones most like us. Correct if I am wrong, but didn’t you descend from the apes?
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 7:11pmCoFemale, the 98% (not 99%!) figure is … ahm… an euphemism of sorts. We share 76% of our DNA with cabbage. It does not necessarily mean that cabbage may be capable of tying shoe laces.
Here is the problem… in order to derive these figures, the DNA of a species is uzipped and then broken down into very small segments and that is then “stirred” together with another species DNA and then the result (pairing-completion of the segments code bases) is measured.
It‘s conceptually similar to cutting groups of four letters from different languages’ newspapers and comparing the results, trying to derive commonalities. There would be a degree of actual commonalities discovered, but also a substantial portion would be a set of arbitrary “semi-words” that are meaningless and have just a statistical correlation. Following me thus far?
The only factual comparison can be done when you map an entire genome of one species and compare it to another, chromosome by chromosome, codon by codon.
BTW, the commonality (and thus the divergence inversion of 3%) of the human genome is presently estimated at 97%. It must be then apparent to you that the chimp figure of 98% sharing is bogus, it only expresses the amount of codon segments that paired together.
We have a very unique set of chromosomes, so far no other species with the same pattern beside **** branch has been discovered. Our 2nd and 3rd chromosomes are fused together.
Report Post »qpwillie
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:47amIs she having Kanzi fix lunch for somebody she doesn’t like?
Report Post »Pyronaught
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:46amBetter not let him watch the movie “Rise of Planet of the Apes” or he will start organizing with the other apes to take their fire technology and bust out on their own.
Report Post »VigilantGuardShark
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 1:05pmLOL! Very funny, I suppose the Occupiers are of the same genus?
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 7:42pmNo, they belong to the genus of Chiroptera Lunaticus (common barking moonbat).
Report Post »Garbageman
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:38amI hate to say this, but if he had a typewriter maybe he could write speeches at the White House.
Report Post »EchoHawk
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:49amStatistically, given enough time, a room full of chimpanzees slapping randomly at the keys of a typewriter could produce the works of Shakespeare.
Report Post »piper60
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:50amProbably already has. That, and can program the teleprompter.
Report Post »thegreatcarnac
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:58amHe does…and he delivers them.
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 7:29pmEchoHawk, stats are usually helpful, but in this case I’d apply the common colloquialism that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. I could tweak the initial params ever so slightly and consequently prove that the proposed full edifice of Shakespeare would never happen.
Report Post »westfayetteville
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:35amMy dog can do tricks too!
Report Post »Gamaliel
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:31amTo DRATTASTIC: I was thinking the same thing. I feat that the woman’s droning, condescending, neutral voice at some point will piss the ape off and he will rip her face off.
Report Post »american1st
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:30amOh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it.
Report Post »[screaming]
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
COFemale
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:04pmPlease go back on your meds, you are scaring the children.
Report Post »american1st
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:37pmyou didn’t recognize the Charlton Heston quote from the planet of the apes?…. :)
Report Post »AmericanStrega
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 6:31pmI got it AMERICAN1ST. Some people are just just too thick to understand some posts.
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 7:33pmAmericanStrega, I prefer using the term “dense”. That way I can’t be accused of being a weightist (or massist, if you prefer more accurate physics concept).
Report Post »Bronco II
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:21amGood for the monkey.GOD created them too and gave them a brain.But they didn’t evolve and neither did we HE created all of humans,fowl,beast,creatures of the sea.The skull they claim they found many years ago they keep saying was a human wasn’t it was the skull of an ape but people can believe what they want.They are lost looking for truth in all the wrong places except one place where the truth lives in GODS WORD. He told us I HAVE FORTOLD YOU ALL THINGS HAVE YOU READ IT??????????
Report Post »ModerationIsBest
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:39amBlah blah blah blah blah blah.
Report Post »ltb
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:43amFirst off, all I saw was a chimp breaking up sticks, then the video cut to him using the lighter to light paper that had been put under some sticks. That is not a chimp making a fire… that is some lady gathering sticks that were broken up by a chimp, then putting those sticks in a pile, then putting paper under the pile of sticks and then putting a lighter in the chimp’s hand (no doubt after leading him by the leash to the pile of sticks). Second, that lady doesn’t know what that chimp is thinking and whether or not he “understands” about travelling, what they are cooking, or that they need more fire to cook the hamburgers. This lady is the same kind of person who looks at a pig’s tooth and imagines Nebraska Man.
Report Post »mohavegreen
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:15amDoes the White House and Congress come to mind?
Report Post »FREDD The WILSON
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:46pmYou mean Obama the Chump, Biden the Baboon, Pelosi the Peligan and Reid the Rat? Yes it does.
Report Post »Chickweedtea
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:11amThis is a tribute to Divine Design if ever I saw one. They are spinning it like its proof of the evolution of species, but this clever chimp needed to learn from an example- from a higher source of knowledge, and then be given tools that were beyond him to perform. Adorable animal, fun occupation for the scientists, but they really are missing the obvious proof. We are nothing without God’s teachings- this chimp would be scratching himself with sticks and eating ants in the jungle but for his training.
Individual people (or in this case animals) can “evolve” in their personal growth as they are given examples and principles of truth and decide to act on what they learn. The variation in a species fluctuate only according to the design parameters of the Great Designer.
Report Post »Conservativeman
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:17amTeach him to face Mecca and pray five times a day. Then you’ll know where the Neanderthal went.
Report Post »ModerationIsBest
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:21amLol.
Report Post »BonelessBoy
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:07pmAbsolutely, 100% truth. Well said.
Report Post »ThankBabyJesus
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 9:57pmIt makes beautiful sense
Report Post »Supergenius
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:58amHave we learned nothing from Planet of the Apes!
Report Post »BlackCrow
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:52amMonkey see……
Report Post »Maji
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:59amMaybe someone can show a video of how to run
a country to Obama!
smackdown33
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:04amHe’s too busy learning to build fires.
Report Post »paco
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:28am…yet…
Report Post »Gonzo
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:32amDetroit, play him some hiphop and he’ll get the hang of it soon enough.
Report Post »The10thAmendment
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:59pm@ Gonzo
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:32am
Detroit, play him some hiphop and he’ll get the hang of it soon enough.
Report Post »———————————————————————————————————————————–
Or the 5th Ward in New Orleans, or South of Campus in Baton Rouge. All 3 area’s are crapholes of liberal trash.
Evil_Conservative
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 1:04pm@Gonzo
lmao
Report Post »The10thAmendment
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:49amIt’s definitely smarter than any liberal or progressive, and if it continues to advance at the rate it is, perhaps it can be as smart as an orangutan in 50 or 60 million years.
Report Post »smackdown33
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:55amIt’s already happened. Ever been to Detroit?
Report Post »FlatFoot
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:48ampffffft … that’s nothing.
Dogs were astronauts in the 1950′s. Monkey’s too.
Teaching a monkey to use a lighter to start a fire is like teaching a 3-yr old child to use silverware.
Whoopty-friggin-Doo.
Report Post »Chuck Stein
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:31amWhen I got to the part about him using a LIGHTER, I was sort of let down — not so big of a deal if he uses a lighter. I don’t recall lighters being used in “Quest For Fire.”
Report Post »I.Gaspar
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:41amThat’s not a chimp…it‘s one of Nancy Pelosi’s nephews…
Report Post »Apple Bite
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:56amHe’s too intelligent to be related to Pelosi….
Report Post »KickinBack
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:37amHe has to use a lighter? That’s cheating.
Report Post »JohnnyinthePedros
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:32amThat’s what I was thinking. He learned how to use a lighter by watching Quest for Fire?
Report Post »ThePostman
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:59pmThis is so idiotic. One can learn how to use a lighter by watching “crack whores gone wild”.
Report Post »drattastic
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:35amKanzi is smarter than your average congressman.
Report Post »capitalideals
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:23amKanzi is smarter than our current president.
Report Post »drattastic
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 1:04pmThat goes without saying.
Report Post »ddg7
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:32amThe owner better not let the chimp watch ‘Planet of the Apes’.
Report Post »bassist237
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:39amHaha, exactly what I was thinking while reading that.
Report Post »drattastic
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 10:41amIt’s all fun and games till Kanzi rips your face off.
Report Post »ModerationIsBest
Posted on December 30, 2011 at 11:28am@Drat
Lol now that’s pretty funny.
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