Chantek

Chantek, born December 17, 1977, at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, is a male hybrid Sumatran/Borneon orangutan who has mastered the use of a number of intellectual skills, including sign language, taught by American anthropologists Lyn Miles and Ann Southcombe. In Malay and Indonesian, cantik (pronounced chanteek) means "lovely" or "beautiful".

An intellectual primate

Chantek has a vocabulary of over 150 modified ESL signs, and he also understands spoken English. Chantek makes and uses tools and even understands the concepts of money and work-exchange. He possesses the spatial comprehension to direct a driving-route from UTC (the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) to the closest Dairy Queen, and the mental comprehension to refer to events that happened years ago. He enjoys creative projects and makes paintings, necklaces, crafts and music.

Early life

Born at Yerkes, Chantek was transferred to UTC when he was nine months old. Miles was the director of a research project to study apes, and she and a few student volunteers cared for him the first several months after his arrival. Dr. Miles taught him his first signs, "food-eat" and "drink". Soon after this her teaching schedule made it necessary to hire an assistant, Ann Southcombe. Ann had experience raising 7 baby gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo and was the first "mother" and "teacher" for Michael, the young gorilla companion to Koko the first signing gorilla. Under the direction of Dr. Miles, Chantek was raised much as a human child yet also had time to be an orangutan. Ann toilet trained Chantek, much as she did Michael. He was given chores, like pick up his toys or sit for a signing test for which he was given an allowance, using steel washers as money.