Genius ape who could understand English and play Minecraft dies

Kanzi, a male bonobo with an advanced aptitude for language, has died at the age of 44, according to the Ape Initiative, a conservation and research centre in Des Moines, Iowa, where he had lived since 2004.

- WORDS KRISTINA KILLGROVE

As an infant, Kanzi, who was born at the Emory National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, accompanied his adoptive mother Matata to language lessons. But while Matata wasn't interested in learning from her human caretakers, Kanzi surprised them by quickly learning the lexigrams, or symbols that map to words, that the researchers were trying to teach his mother, in much the same way human children learn language by listening to their parents talking.