Chantek (December 17, 1977 – August 7, 2017),[1] born at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, was a male hybrid Sumatran/Bornean orangutan[2] who demonstrated a number of intellectual skills, including the use of several signs adapted from American Sign Language (ASL).
Born at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Chantek was transferred to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) when he was nine months old.
Lyn Miles directed a research project to study apes, and she and a few student volunteers cared for him during the first few months after his arrival.
Ann Southcombe also worked with Michael, who lived with Koko, the first gorilla taught to communicate using signs.
[5] Chantek spent almost nine years living under constant supervision in a specially adapted trailer on the UTC campus.
[citation needed] He lived in a small enclosure at Yerkes for the next eleven years, during which his weight reportedly increased due to limited physical activity.
Like many other orangutans who have demonstrated problem solving skills, Chantek exhibited certain intuitive and thinking character traits comparable to the rationality used in human engineering.
His intellectual and linguistic abilities made some scientists, including Miles and Dawn Prince-Hughes, regard him as possessing personhood.
[9] The term personhood is often ascribed by experts to animals who demonstrate conscious awareness, language, and acculturation.
Miles and other researchers advocate for the extension of certain legal rights to great apes, based on observed cognitive abilities.