Kanzi (born October 28, 1980), also known by the lexigram (from the character 太), is a male bonobo who has been the subject of several studies on great ape language.

The ill-fated facility, founded in 2004 by local businessman, Ted Townsend, closed after losing funding, experiencing allegations of neglect, and a flood.

[2][3] Within a short time, Kanzi had mastered the ten words that researchers had been struggling to teach his adoptive mother, and he has since learned more than 348, which he can also combine for new meaning.

When he was eight years old, Kanzi was a subject of a research program in which his ability to respond to spoken requests was compared with that of a two-year-old human child called Alia.

[11][12] Another study, designed and carried out by archaeologists Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth, aimed to compare Kanzi's cognitive and mechanical abilities with those of early human ancestors who made and used Early Stone Age tools (probably Homo habilis), such as Oldowan stone flakes and cores (a core is the rock from which a flake has been removed).

In this study, Schick and Toth showed Kanzi how to flake stone, producing a sharp edge that could be used to cut through a rope in order to gain access to a food reward.

After modeling the flaking behavior on a variety of occasions, the researchers set up each experiment by placing a food reward inside a box with a transparent lid which was held closed by a length of rope.

It's "the first [such work] to replicate in a controlled setting similar findings from the wild"; Johns Hopkins assistant professor Chris Krupenye noted "The results also suggest apes can simultaneously hold two conflicting world views in their mind.

[1][2] Kanzi is recognized for his ability to "evoke absent objects, invent new formulas to describe elements whose names he did not know...he had a certain notion of time and seemed to understand another's point of view.

[23] Based on trials performed at Yerkes Primate Research Center, Kanzi was able to identify symbols correctly 89–95% of the time.

Kanzi’s utterances still rely heavily on human interpretation, a common criticism of great ape language experiments.

[28] Kanzi also showed no ability in the use of function words, nor could he make use of morphology, such as indicating the plural form of a noun, or syntax.