Classical biology was basically a bunch of British guys sailing around the world and sticking pins through any moving thing they found. Animal "specimens" from lowly insects to birds and primates were all subject to the same, often brutal treatment. Concepts like "animal welfare" weren't supported with substantial legislation until the late 20th century. It was Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees in the 1960s that taught humanity it wasn't a lone island of intelligence in a sea of soulless animal automatons. Since then we’ve been surprised, amazed, and even surpassed by some of our ingenious animal cousins.
Meet Kanzi the bonobo.
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The Great Ape Trust has deemed him “the world’s undisputed ape-language superstar.” He understands over 600 words, many of which he communicates to researchers via a large keyboard. The keys correspond to various nouns, verbs and adjectives, which the machine then speaks in English, but no key’s symbol is related to the thing it represents. Kanzi is the first ape to have learned human language simply by observing people, namely his adoptive mother, Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who has been his primary teacher and researcher. He is able not only to identify items and answer simple questions, but to synthesize his own words and phrases from the ones on his keyboard. To identify pizza, he said, “bread, cheese, tomato,” and when his home-state of
