Bonnie (born 1976, in
Rio Grande Zoo) is a
hybrid
Hybrid may refer to:
Science
* Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding
** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species
** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
female
Sumatran/
Bornean
Borean (also Boreal or Boralean)http://ehl.santafe.edu/EhlforWeb.pdf is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. ...
orangutan
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genu ...
living at the
National Zoo in Washington, D.C., since 1980.
She began spontaneously whistling, mimicking an animal caretaker making the sound. This is significant as whistling is a sound that is in a human's—but not an orangutan's—repertoire. While some "lower primates" have been shown to make non-standard sounds for their species, it has always been the result of intense training, whereas Bonnie picked up the new sound mechanism through imitation. Furthermore, she seems to whistle just because she likes the sound as opposed to producing this behavior in response to a potential food reward. Bonnie's whistling was documented in the journal
''Primates'' by Dr. Serge Wich et al.
See also
*
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
* Bam Bam, an orangutan, played Precious on the soap opera ...
References
External links
Video of Bonnie whistling
{{Great apes
Individual orangutans
National Zoological Park (United States)
1978 animal births