Ai (born in 1976, estimated) is a female
western chimpanzee
The western chimpanzee or West African chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes verus'') is a Critically Endangered subspecies of the common chimpanzee. It inhabits western Africa, specifically Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Guinea-B ...
(''Pan troglodytes verus''),
currently living at the
Primate Research Institute of
Kyoto University
, or , is a National university, national research university in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is one of the former Imperial Universities and the second oldest university in Japan.
The university has ten undergraduate faculties, eighteen gra ...
(acronym KUPRI). She is the first subject of the Ai project, a research program started in 1978 by Kiyoko Murofushi and
Tetsuro Matsuzawa aimed at understanding chimpanzee
cognition
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
through computer interface experiments.
Biography
Ai was born in 1976 (estimated) in the
Guinean Forests of West Africa
Forest along the Edéa.html" ;"title="Sanaga River at Edéa">Sanaga River at Edéa, Cameroon
The Guinean forests of West Africa is a biodiversity hotspot designated by Conservation International, which includes the belt of Tropical and subtropi ...
.
Born wild, Ai was soon taken into captivity and sold to KUPRI in 1977 by an animal trader (this type of sale became illegal in 1980 with
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
's ratification of
CITES
CITES (shorter acronym for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of inte ...
).
She was the first subject of KUPRI’s chimpanzee project, which was intended to become Japan’s first ape-language study in the vein of earlier
ape-language studies.
Ai was joined at KUPRI the following year by two more chimpanzees, Akira and Mari.
In 2000, Ai gave birth to a son,
Ayumu.
Ai Project
Matsuzawa has written that the difference between the Ai Project and earlier ape-language studies is that he was less interested in seeing if Ai and the other chimpanzees were capable of learning some degree of human language than trying to understand how chimpanzees perceive their surroundings.
To study this, the research team created a customized keyboard for Ai and the other chimpanzees at KUPRI to interact with a computer. The computer was used to standardize the studies and reduce variation that might be introduced by human researchers.
Researchers have studied Ai’s memory, number-learning, and perception of color. Matsuzawa wrote that Ai was “the first chimpanzee who learned to use Arabic numerals to represent numbers,” and her ordering of different shades and hues of
Munsell color chips was similar to human orderings.
Group and living quarters
In 2000, not long after the birth of three chimpanzees, Ai's group numbered 15;
in 2010, there were 14 members. This is similar to the size of some small chimpanzee groups in the wild, where in some places with stable food supplies group size hovers at around 20 chimpanzees.
Matsuzawa has attempted to blend elements of laboratory and field research, and KUPRI has an outdoor complex for the chimpanzees called the Ape Research Annex, built in 1995, with an 8-meter tall tower, a river, and trees.
After Ai gave birth to her son, Ayumu, in 2000, they were placed in a “twin booth” where Ayumu could live with Ai in one booth but also be exposed to the researcher in the other booth every day, making the researcher an integral part of Ayumu’s life and studying him in front of Ai, with her implicit approval.
Matsuzawa wrote that:
Two almost identical booths are placed side by side. There is a door between the two booths that can alternately be opened to connect the two areas, closed to separate the two individuals, or positioned half-open to allow the young chimpanzee to crawl from one area to the other while preventing the mother chimpanzee from entering the neighboring booth.
This method allowed the research team to consistently track Ayumu's development without interfering excessively with the mother-offspring relationship.
Art
Ai loves to paint and draw –– she started drawing at a young age –– and is often brought art materials for free-drawing or painting.
She creates art as an end in itself, without a food reward. In 2013 she made a painting that was given to the president of Kyoto University; later, in honor of the 40th anniversary of her arrival at KUPRI, this painting was made into a silk scarf and given as a gift to
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English zoologist, Primatology, primatologist and Anthropology, anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremo ...
.
See also
*
Primate Research Institute
*
Great ape language
Great ape language research historically involved attempts to teach chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans to communicate using imitative human speech, sign language, physical tokens and computerized lexigrams. These studies were con ...
*
List of individual apes
This is a list of non-human apes of encyclopedic interest. It includes individual chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and gibbons that are in some way famous or notable.
Actors
* J. Fred Muggs (a chimpanzee born 1952) was a "co-host" ...
References
External links
* Ai's
{{Authority control
1976 animal births
Individual apes involved in language studies
Individual chimpanzees
Individual animals in Japan