Rating: WORTHY!
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a psychologist and primatologist. This book is about her work with a Bonobo (an ape closely related to the chimpanzee) named Kanzi who learned to communicate in ways humans could understand. The author is so far the only scientist to conduct language research with bonobos. Roger Lewin is a science writer who has worked for both New Scientist and Science publications.
Bonobos are very similar to chimpanzees, but not the same species. Kanzi was the first ape to acquire words in the same way that human children do, but her view that language is learnable by apes is contested by other scientists, such as Steven Pinker, who is a cognitive scientist. Kanzi also learned from human tutors how to create sharp flints which could cut ropes which held fast a box containing food, and he demonstrated the ability to create them (including using his own method of smashing the rock and simply selecting the sharpest fragment!).
The author makes no claim that apes are human, but that - as the book's subtitle shows, they are at the brink of the human mind, which of course they must be as our closest living relatives. Modern bonobos and chimpanzees did not evolve into humans, but we certainly do share a common ancestor with them, and one of those ancestral lines, very much ape at one point, did indeed evolve to give rise to the human lineage that led to us. This books gives fascinating insights into how that process may have begun and also into how minds like ours but not the same as ours, view the world - and us. I commend this as a very worthy read.
