But now Kanzi the ‘talking’ ape has reached the pinnacle of his packed showbiz career – he has been the subject of a feature on Oprah Winfrey’s talkshow.
A 29-year-old bonobo, Kanzi is able to understand and communicate with humans and is believed to understand around 450 words – 30 to 40 of which he uses on a daily basis.
Kanzi has been a celebrity ape since the late 1980s when his astonishing ability to communicate was first discovered.
He lives at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa where expert Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has been teaching him to ‘speak’ by pointing at symbols on a computer.
He speaks by pressing a symbol on the computer which then repeats the word out loud. Dr Savage-Rumbaugh says that he is even able to put together two-word sentences and shows remarkable invention when creating new phrases.
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