Researchers recently conducted studies suggesting that pigeons are as mathematically adept as primates, but they’re still a long way off from lighting fires and cooking their own burger like Kanzi, a 31-year-old bonobo does. He collects firewood, can strike a match or use a lighter, and fry up food. Sometimes referred to as pygmy chimpanzees, the highly intelligent animals are mankind’s closest living relative. And it shows.

Under the care of Dr Savage-Rumbaugh, a senior scientist at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Kanzi has been observed doing all sorts of humanly things, even toasting marshmallows and understanding thousands of spoken commands. Remarkably, Kanzi is even teaching his son Teco the ways of the homo sapien.

The UK’s Daily Mail asks, “What would happen if he was released into the wild where other bonobos could copy his behaviour?” Although by no means an expert on primates, I think it’s safe to say that they would burn down their habitat.

The photo above, which has been circulating wildly on the net in the past 24 hours, is something that I found it so moving that I just had to post it. It’s an image published in the November issue of National Geographic of a deceased chimp named Dorothy who was cared for by the Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center. Prior to being brought into the center, Dorothy was trained to drink beer and smoke cigarettes at an amusement park in Cameroon. After being rescued by Sanaga-Yong, it’s reported that Dorothy, who was estimated to be 40 when she died of heart failure, became a mother figure to many of the other chimps at the facility. About Dorothy’s death and burial, a volunteer at the center said:

The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy’s chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration, but perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.