Only the imagination is the limit – that is, the pygmy chimpanzee Kanzilla

In the year In 1980, an extraordinary monkey was born in an American research institute. A pygmy chimpanzee named Kanzi learned to skillfully communicate with people using symbols and understand some English.

Like Koko the gorilla who knew sign language, Kanzi also became a monkey celebrity whose linguistic abilities were marveled at for decades.

Work died last March aged 44. Now, another study appeared about Kanzi’s skills.

In the final tests, it was revealed that Kanzi might even have the ability to understand imagined things, somewhat like a small child.

At children’s tea parties, it is customary to pour “tea” from an empty jug into empty cups, and pretend that there is real tea in them. In the journal Science published research strongly suggests that Kanzi would also have understood such imaginative play.

In the exam the researcher put two empty glasses and an empty pitcher on the table in front of Kanzi. Then he was pouring a pitcher of liquid into another glass. He asked the monkey which glass had juice. Kanzi immediately pointed to the glass with a cup of juice.

Then the test was made more difficult. The researcher poured the “juice” into both glasses, but then had to pour the “juice” from the other glass back into the jug.

Kanzi chose correctly again, that is, he pointed to the glass that would have contained this imagination juice, when it had been playfully poured out of the other glass. It guessed correctly most of the time, 68 percent of the trials.

As if Kanzi had really been involved in the game and knew how to imagine the world with such a level of imagination. That would be extraordinary for a monkey.

Any more The cover cannot be examined. At the end of the year, The New York Times published obituaries about famous people who died in 2025.

Among them were such distinguished primates as a film director David Lynchan actor Terence Stampa boxer George Foreman and the pioneer of chimpanzee research, Dr Jane Goodall.

Kanzi was introduced first. “He was a bright-eyed and empathetic creature who wanted to connect with other monkeys, including us humans,” the author describes.