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such as the way the bonobos in the San Diego Zoo used hand-clapping to ask for things and then,
as they were moved to other zoos, taught the gesture to the bonobos they encountered. When Sue
Savage-Rumbaugh speaks of the human-bonobo culture that she lives in, I understand what she
means: her bonobos made very human gestures; they looked me in the eye, appearing aware of the
combination of reactions their behavior might elicit from me. Their easy familiarity was unlike that
of the wild bonobos who—some amused, some surly—accepted our presence, at times with curi-
osity, at times with wariness, going about their daily feeding with an eye cast back, just in case we
turned out to be like those humans they ran across during the war, who hunted them with guns.
Though the increasingly large body of knowledge around ape behavior is providing an immense
record of their mental complexity, we are capable of understanding a lot about apes from a few
examples. For instance, in
Brutal Kinship
, a book of photographs and essays looking at the way
humans subjugate chimps to their needs, Nick Nichols describes the unique culture of Tai Forest
chimpanzees, one element of which is their use of stones as both anvils and hammers to open nuts.
Like the cultures of humans, that of the chimps is passed from generation to generation. “Tai moth-
ers teach their infants the skill of cracking the shells without crushing the kernels carefully and
patiently—cleaning the anvil, putting the nut in just the right position, even molding the infants'
fingers around the hammer, adjusting the lesson to the little one's level of skill.” Similarly, Jane
Goodall points out that various groups of chimps observed throughout Africa show different sets of
tool-using cultures, which they meticulously pass down through the generations.
One of the most compelling presentations of ape culture is to be found in
The Great Ape Pro-
ject: Equality Beyond Humanity
, a collection of writings by both ape experts and others who have
had contact with apes, examining the possibility of a great ape personhood act that would offer apes
the same legal protections as humans. The arguments are exhaustive, looking at biological, cultural,
ethical, and legal issues. For example, Richard D. Ryder, a psychologist whose work defends an-
imal welfare, states that great apes challenge the foundations of our conventional morality, which,
he argues, is based around altruism. Humans, Ryder explains, show altruistic behavior “motivated
either by a (learned) sense of duty or by a spontaneous feeling of empathy based upon the aware-
ness of others' sentiency and, in particular, their capacity to feel pain or distress.” However, though
great apes show clear signs of sentiency, which Ryder evokes as “the greatest mystery of the uni-
verse,” humans rarely recognize their conscious suffering.
A glance at a Nick Nichols photograph—at the eyes of a chimpanzee that has been imprisoned
for years with little food and no sunlight, or experimented on with surgical operations—is enough
to convey their pain and dissolve the boundaries between us and them. Their haunted gazes are
undeniably human, damaged in ways we would recognize in another person. African hunters de-
scribe how, when cornered, chimpanzees beg for their lives in the same way humans would, bow-
ing, stretching out their arms, their faces pleading. And Koko, a lowland gorilla who has learned
sign language to communicate with humans, can discuss what happens when someone dies but
shows clear signs of discomfort when the subject is her own death or that of a friend. Jane Goodall
describes the range of emotions in chimps, how orphans can die of grief after losing their mother,
or how youths “gambol around, somersault, pirouette, and sometimes break off to hug their mother
in sheer exuberance. Chimps have a sense of humor, and they can also be embarrassed.” Decades
of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's writing reveal parallels between the behaviors of bonobos and humans.
A series of photographs in
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind
shows bonobo facial expressions
