by Tetsuro Matsuzawa Kodonsha, 2001 Tokyo, Japan [Note: Written in Japanese. The following English-language information was provided by the author.] Author's Introduction: This book illuminates the first year of life of Ai's son, Ayumu. Ai, a twenty-five year old female chimpanzee, has learned to use visual symbols on the computer screen-like alphabets and Arabic numerals-to communicate the perceptual world of the chimpanzee to us. The Ai project is one of the longest ape-language projects, having been started in 1978. Ai gave birth to a son in 2000. Her son was named Ayumu, meaning "walk" in Japanese. Two other mothers also gave birth to infants last year, giving us a group of fourteen chimpanzees, representing three generations. These animals live in a semi-natural, enriched environment at the Kyoto Primate Research Center. One advantage of this is that researchers can work with mother-infant pairs in the same room, across this generational range. With help from the mothers, researchers are able to do cognitive tests on the newborns. A new project on chimpanzee intelligence has begun which focuses on how the knowledge and skills learned by the mothers are transmitted to the infants. Based on the triadic relationship of chimpanzee mother-infant-human researcher, this new research is generating some new findings with respect to neonatal smiling and facial imitation in chimpanzees. Ayumu, at the age of 9 and a half months, started to touch the computer monitor after careful observation of his mother and to do match to sample tasks between colors and corresponding Japanese Kanji characters. AUTHOR'S NOTES AND ORDERING INFORMATION The book is a popular book, not intended for the experts. Price: 1500 yen (approximately $12.00) A TV version of the book was broadcast under the same title in 2001 by NHK, Japan. Copies of the video (50 min long NTSC format) are available for educational purposes only. For the experts, please see the following book and journal: Matsuzawa, T. ed. Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior, Springer, 2001 Animal Cognition, Vol. 4, No. 3-4, published in November 2001, Springer. Please send requests via e-mail to the author at: matsuzaw@pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp You can also visit the Primate Center website: http://www.pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp Then click on "Chimpanzee Ai".
URL: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/review/ai.html
Page last modified:
January 23, 2002
Maintained by the WRPRC Library
Return to Review Copies Received
Return to PIN Home Page