A bonobo learned language by eavesdropping on his mother's failed lessons

Researchers were training Kanzi's mother Matata to use a symbol board when they noticed young Kanzi, who'd just been watching, already understood the symbols better than she did. Kanzi went on to grasp hundreds of spoken English words and respond correctly to novel sentences he'd never heard, without ever being formally drilled.

— Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Lewin, Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind — Wiley, 1994
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