Slideshows:

• Bonobos explore outdoor yard
• Retrospective of Bonobo Research Center

Videos:

• Kanzi Understands Spoken Language

• Kanzi and Novel Sentences

• Panbanisha Draws Coffee

Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

Scientist With Special Standing

Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a scientist with special standing at Great Ape Trust – a world-class research center dedicated to studying the behavior and intelligence of great apes. The first and only scientist to conduct language research with bonobos,  Savage-Rumbaugh joined Great Ape Trust in 2005 following a 30-year association with Georgia State University's Language Research Center (LRC).  In 2008, she retired from the administrative and laboratory duties in the Great Ape Trust bonobo facility to focus exclusively on research, writing and lecturing.

Biographical Sketch

At the LRC, Dr. 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 simple syntactical structures, learn concepts of number and quantity, and perform complex perceptual-motor tasks has helped change the way humans view other members of the primate order.

Dr. 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).

Honors

• Invited speaker to the Nobel Conference XXXII (1996)
• Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Chicago (1997)
• Leighton A. Wilkie Award in Anthropology from Indiana University (2000)
• The Smithsonian Institution's display of "Understanding Ourselves, Understanding Each Other"

Scientific Articles

• Savage-Rumbaugh, S. & Fields, W.M. (2007) “Rules and Tools: Beyond Anthropomorphism: A qualitative report on the stone tool manufacture and use by captive bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha.” In N. Toth’s Craft Institute Oldowan Technologies 1(1).
• Fields, W.M., Segerdahl, P., & Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S. (2007) “The Material Practices of Ape Language.” In J. Valsiner & Alberto Rosa (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Socio-Cultural Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Rumbaugh, D.M. & W.M. Fields. (2006) “Language as a Window on the Cultural Mind.” In S. Hurley (Ed.) Rational Animals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi Wamba, Panbanisha Wamba and Nyota Wamba. (2007) "Welfare of Apes in Captive  Environments: Comments On,  and By, a Specific Group of Apes." Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M.,Segerdahl, P., & D.M. Rumbaugh. (2005) “Culture Prefigures Cognition in Pan/Homo Bonobos.” Theoria 20(3).
• Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S., Segerdahl, P., Fields, W.M. (2005) “Individual Differences in Language Competencies in Apes Resulting from Unique Rearing Conditions Imposed by Different First Epistemologies.” In L.L. Namy & S.R. Waxman (Eds.)
• Segerdahl, P., Fields, W.M., & Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S. (2005) Kanzi’s Primal Language: The Cultural Initiation of Apes Into Language. London: Palgrave/Macmillan.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M., & T. Spircu. (2004). “The Emergence of Knapping and Vocal Expression Embedded in a Pan/Homo Culture.” J. of Biology and Philosophy (19).
• Fields, W.M., & Savage-Rumbaugh, S. (2003). [Review of the book A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness]. Contemporary Psychology 48(8).
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W. (2002) "Hacias el control de nuevas realidades," Quark (25), 20-26.
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Fields, W.M. & Taglialetela, J. (2001) "Language, Speech, Tools and Writing: A cultural imperative." In Thompson, E. (Ed.), Between Ourselves: Second-person issues in the study of consciousness, (pp.273-292) Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
• Savage-Rumbuagh, E.S. & Fields, W.M. (2000) "Linguistic, Cultural and Cognitive Capabilities of Bonobos (Pan paniscus)." Culture & Psychology 6(2), 131-153.
• "Perception of Personality Traits and Semantic Learning in Evolving Hominids, in The Descent of Mind: Psychological Perspectives on Hominid Evolution" (pages 98-115), Oxford University Press, 1999.
• "Ape Communication: Between a Rock and a Hard Place in Origins of Language: What Non-Human Primates Can Tell Us" School of American Research Press, 1999.
• "Continuing Investigations into the Stone Tool-Making and Tool-Using Capabilities of Bonobo (Pan paniscus)" in Journal of Archaeological Science, 26 (pages 821-832), 1999.
• "Language, Comprehension in Ape and Child" (Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development) Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Jeannine Murphy, Rose A. Sevcik, Karen E. Brakke, Shelly L. Williams and Duane M. Rumbaugh; University Of Chicago Press (July 1993)