Honored to be Related

We had learned during our visit yesterday to the Great Ape Trust of Iowa that vision is a primary sense of the great apes, with hearing as a weaker faculty. We had been told about their intellect and seen videos of their ability to invent and implement tools to accomplish desired tasks, and even make music. Indeed, we were told, most of the DNA of the great apes is identical to humans. And by the time we had observed the researcher interact with one of the bonobos utilizing a computerized touch screen, we could begin to comprehend the wonder of what was taking place. But it wasn't until the formal program ended and our group of 30 was permitted to informally watch and interact with a different pair in a second area of the room that our universe tilted.

The bonobos, in this international research center, communicate via symbol boards, called lexigrams (one of which is pictured above, copied from the GAT website) developed by Dr. Duane Rumbaugh, one of the resident scientists at the trust. Sometimes the lexigrams are computerized as on the touch screen; sometimes printed on a laminated, poster-sized card they carry around. Filled with rows and rows of simple, somewhat abstract symbols for objects and actions that have become a part of the vocabulary of the apes, the educated apes have become quite adept at pointing precisely and rapidly at various symbols to construct sentences and communicate with the researchers with whom they share the visual vocabulary. It is a marvelous, if somewhat humbling, invention -- "marvelous" because it enables an interaction almost unbelievable; "humbling" because bonobos can learn English, but we, the supposedly "superior" animal can't seem to learn the bonobo language.

And so we watched and marveled. And then a female bonobo named Panbanisha pointed through the glass at a woman from our group standing near the front, and pointed, according to the researcher, at the symbol for "hurt." Indeed, the woman had a disfiguration on her face, and I thought to myself, "this could be embarrassing -- the ape calling attention to something the woman might prefer to keep hidden." The rest of us had noticed the woman's marring, but of course had had the courtesy to overlook it. But not Panbanisha. Once more she pointed at the woman and then to the symbol board. "Hurt." And then at the symbol for "groom."

"She is concerned that you are hurt," once more explained the researcher, "and wonders why we aren't grooming you. That's what they would do." The woman chuckled and explained to Panbanisha and the rest of us that the day before, she had tripped over her husband's suitcase, fallen and cut up her face. It wasn't, after all, a birthmark or plaguing illness, but rather -- just as Panbanisha had discerned -- a "hurt." And that is when the universe began to tilt. While the rest of us had simply and "tastefully" ignored the woman's injury, the bonobo had noticed, cared, and elicited her story. And while we stood around, an occasional chuckle at the fascination of it all, the bonobo continued to point at the wounded woman and the symbol board, wondering why we weren't doing anything to help her.

Finally, it seemed as though Panbanisha gave up on us. Different symbols were identified and our guide smiled and told us, "She is ready for us to leave and go outside." Perhaps she was simply tired of the interaction and was ready for some private time. More likely it was frustrated dismissal, as if to say, "if you can't even help someone when they are hurt, I don't have any time for you." Indeed.

We navigated our way back toward the entrance, handed our visitor badges back to the guard, and drove back out into a world that will never quite look the same again. Lowered somewhat -- and trivialized -- are the walls that, just a few hours before, had seemed so significant dividing the various expressions of life; divisions like "animal" and "human"; like "primitive" and "intelligent"; like "alien" and "native." I couldn't help but think about our typical thought process when encountering a "foreigner" who doesn't speak English. First we speak more loudly, as though the problem were hearing. Then we "dumb" it down, as though the problem were intellect, when all the while the barrier is simply one of language and our egocentric disposition toward superiority.

Meanwhile, the only one in the room to genuinely observe, empathize, and extract a wounded woman's story was the "beast." I hope the evolutionists are right, because I would be honored to count Panbanisha a part of my family.

What would the world be like, I have not ceased wondering, if all of us could be that primitive?