Panbanisha was the female bonobo known for using lexigrams to communicate, and she was Kanzi’s half-sister. Her work formed part of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s research into symbolic communication in great apes.
Panbanisha used a keyboard containing geometric symbols called lexigrams. Each symbol represented a word or concept, and researchers paired the symbols with spoken English. Unlike speech, lexigrams gave her a visible way to select and combine symbols, allowing her to respond to people and communicate with other bonobos.
She was born at Georgia State University’s Language Research Center in 1985. By age three, she reportedly demonstrated comprehension of 179 Yerkish words. Panbanisha and Kanzi shared the same mother, Matata, although Kanzi was adopted by Matata rather than being her biological offspring.
A common mix-up is confusing Panbanisha with Koko, the gorilla famous for sign-language research, or with Lana, a chimpanzee who used a computer-based symbol system. Panbanisha died in 2012 at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa.