The world is a mask that hides the real world.
Thatâs what everybody suspects, though the world we see wonât let us dwell on it long.
The world has ways - more masks - of getting our attention.
The suspicion sneaks in now and again, between the cracks of everyday existenceâ¦the bird song dips, rises, dips, trails off into blue sky silence before the note that would reveal the shape of a melody that, somehow, would tie everything together, on the verge of unmasking the hidden armature that frames this sky, this tree, this bird, this quivering green leaf, jewels in a crown.â¦
As the song dies, the secret withdraws.
The tree is a mask.
The sky is a mask.
The quivering green leaf is a mask.
The song is a mask.
The singing bird is a mask.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Savage-Rumbaugh's bonobos "in the house"
Bonobos Arrive Soon At Great Ape Trust of Iowa
By the middle of next week the first members of a family of eight bonobos will arrive at Great Ape Trust of Iowa – bringing to Des Moines one of the world’s most comprehensive scientific research programs into ape intelligence and behavior. The bonobos, once known as pygmy chimpanzees, will be transferred to Great Ape Trust from Georgia State University’s Language Research Center in Atlanta during the final week of April.
Panbanisha, a 19 year-old female and her seven-year-old son Nyota will be the first bonobos to call Great Ape Trust home. An Ape Transport Vehicle (ATV) is being designed that will safely secure the bonobos while allowing them to view their 970 mile trip. Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, lead scientist for bonobo research at Great Ape Trust, and members of the scientific and veterinary teams will monitor the two bonobos and document, for research purposes, their experiences in the ATV.
“This move holds significant scientific value about the bonobos understanding of time and distance. Studying them as they do certain things or acquire specific skills normally associated with human cultures, we gain important insights into the process of culture itself,” says Savage-Rumbaugh. “These insights help us realize that we, as humans, do not come equipped by nature for very much other than to learn.”
The remaining six bonobos, including the world famous Kanzi, will be transferred to Great Ape Trust in early May. Their specially-designed 13,000 square foot home sits on seven acres with three outdoor yards. The building features a large greenhouse, two 30-foot climbing towers, and two attached outdoor enclosures. Scientists will communicate with the bonobos by using lexigrams, or abstract symbols, displayed on touchscreen monitors. Three-dozen remote camera locations will document the research and allow participating scientists from around the world to view, via the Internet, their specific research trials.
The most prominent features of the 13,000 square foot bonobo research laboratory at Great Ape Trust are the 1,500 square foot greenhouse and the two 30-foot high climbing towers.
Savage-Rumbaugh is the first and only scientist doing language research with bonobos. She joined Great Ape Trust – a world-class research center dedicated to studying the behavior and intelligence of great apes – following a 23-year association with Georgia State University's Language Research Center (LRC).
At the LRC, Savage-Rumbaugh helped pioneer the use of a number of new technologies for working with primates. These include a keyboard which provides for speech synthesis, allowing the animals to communicate using spoken English, and a "primate friendly" computer-based joystick terminal that permits the automated presentation of many different computerized tasks. Information developed at the center regarding the abilities of non-human primates to acquire symbols, comprehend spoken words, decode syntactical structures, learn concepts of number and quantity, and perform complex perceptual-motor tasks has helped changed the way humans view other members of the primate order.
“From what I have seen in the bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans I have worked with – when the environment is right, learning is like lightning, it always happens in flashes of insight,“ Savage-Rumbaugh adds. “Repeated trials on something and rewards for appropriate actions never facilitate learning per se; they only serve as a poor attempt to 'control' or channel behavior.
Savage-Rumbaugh's work with Kanzi, the first ape to learn language in the same manner as children, was detailed in Language Comprehension in Ape and Child published in Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (1993). It was selected by the "Millennium Project" as one of the top 100 most influential works in cognitive science in the 20th century by the University of Minnesota Center for Cognitive Sciences in 1991. Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh's work is also featured in Apes, Language and the Human Mind (Oxford Press, 1996) and Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (John Wiley & Sons, 1995).
Among Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh's other honors include: The Smithsonian Institution's display of "Understanding Ourselves, Understanding Each Other," sponsored by the American Psychological Association's Centennial Convention; being an invited speaker to the Nobel Conference XXXII (1996); receiving an Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Chicago (1997) and receiving the Leighton A. Wilkie Award in Anthropology from Indiana University (2000).
The arrival of the bonobos from Georgia State University will mark the end of the initial phase of development at Great Ape Trust. Last September, two orangutans from Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park in Washington, DC became the first residents of Great Ape Trust as part of Dr. Rob Shumaker’s Orangutan Language Project.
Great Ape Trust began as the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary in early 2002. In June of 2003, work crews began developing the former sand and gravel quarry near the Des Moines River. Located about five miles southeast of downtown Des Moines on more than 230 acres of lowlands, river forest and lakes, Great Ape Trust of Iowa will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). To learn more about Great Ape Trust of Iowa, go to www.GreatApeTrust.org.
