Analysis Of Apes, Language, And The Human Mind By Kanzi

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Aladdin was my favorite cartoon as a kid while growing up in India. It wasn’t because of the storyline or even the fact that the main protagonist had the same color skin as me; it was because of Abu. Abu was an intelligent small brown monkey and Aladdin’s best friend. I wanted a best friend like Abu and realized it was a possibility when I found out a group of monkeys resided on the rooftop of the colony in which I lived. I was under strict orders not to go to the roof but what five years old actually follows orders? Everyday I would make my way to the roof and watch the monkeys play until one day I got the courage to join them myself. As I approached the group, all but one ran away to the other side of the roof. The one that stayed looked …show more content…

Unlike The Talking Ape, which gave Kanzi only a paragraph or two, this book has a whole section on the life and experiences of Kanzi. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind depicts Kanzi’s curiosity in great detail when telling us the story about an electrical outlet inside the research center. Savage Rumbaugh, the author of this book, stated that while growing up Kanzi wasn’t told what he could or could not do; he was only advised of the probable consequences of his actions. Although knowing about the consequences beforehand, Kanzi always wanted to find out what would happen for himself. That isn’t much different than human children; children tend to do things their parents warn them against until they experience the consequence first hand. In Kanzi’s case, he did exactly what a child would do. At a certain age, Kanzi began to question everything he had once been told and discovered that he could evaluate things for himself. One day, Kanzi hide a screwdriver under a blanket and waited until he was alone and then placed it directly in the Electrical outlet he had been told to stay away from. The screwdriver has a plastic handle so all Kanzi experienced was a little shock but that was enough for him to start gesturing about the dangers of the outlet in the room. Kanzi began to throw things at the outlet presuming it would go away because he had seen the humans throw things at snakes to make them go away. Although the results were different, it illustrated Kanzi’s ability not only to understand danger but also to try and get rid of it the same way he had seen others get rid of different kinds of danger. Like every other five-years-old, Kanzi viewed danger as a challenge to overcome. After this example, Rumbaugh then told the readers about how and why Kanzi ended up in the care of The Language and Research Center much like how The Talking Ape did. Then the

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