[6] Savage-Rumbaugh co-reared Panbanisha with a female chimpanzee, Panpanzee (also known as Panzee),[2] for five years in an environment with other bonobos and with human teachers.

[8] Of the two, Panbanisha showed greater linguistic capability, and she was able to comprehend far more spoken language and lexigrams than Panzee.

[6] The researchers claim that the experiments with these apes show that the gap between the genus Pan and our early hominid ancestors, and even ourselves, is much smaller than we had previously realised.

This came as a new wave of educating nonhuman apes and a created a bond between Panbanisha and the people helping her learn.

[9] Panbanisha excelled in comparison to Kanzi, her half brother when it came to her responses to recorded sentences.

Out of all subjects (nonhuman apes) that underwent this trial, Panbanisha was the most perceptive to her name being called (37 out of 51 times).

[9] Some compare the breakthroughs with Panbanisha to those regularly shown with dogs, but the key difference is that Panbanisha and other bonobos have the ability to not just understand and comprehend, but to give responses through the lexigram, thus proving a point that they can respond with the English language [citation needed].

Starting at such a young age she became far more advanced in her knowledge of communication than her adopted brother Kanzi.

For example, when Bill Fields, one of her researchers, asked Panbanisha what was wrong, she replied “Kanzi bad keyboard”.

[11] Apes are physically unable to speak English because they lack the vocal structures that humans have.

[14] The Yerkish lexigram language uses symbols that mean a word or phrase in English, when arranged in the correct grammatical sequence.

The lexigrams were used to show that apes could learn a language with a strict syntax, actually communicate with other people, and understand English and not just repeat or imitate human actions.