Ten academics, including James Benson and William Greaves, professors emeriti at Glendon College, and Stuart Shanker, distinguished research professor in philosophy & psychology in York’s Faculty of Health and director of the Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative, wrote a letter to The New York Times' Sunday Book Review section Oct. 17 in which they respond to a review essay that compared a fictional account of bonobos (Sara Gruen’s Ape House) with a nonfiction book on apes (Jon Cohen’s Almost Chimpanzee):

In her essay “Trouble in the Monkey House” (Sept. 12), Jennifer Schuessler concocts a peculiar mash-up. The pairing of a fictional account of bonobos (Sara Gruen’s “Ape House”) with a nonfiction book on apes (Jon Cohen’s “Almost Chimpanzee”) makes some sense; Gruen grounded her novel in visits to real-life bonobos at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa, a place also visited by Cohen.

But lest readers be led astray, we wish to clarify that the Great Ape Trust is in no way connected with Marc Hauser, the Harvard scientist mentioned in the essay who has been accused of falsifying data in his primate studies. For those with serious interest about the research into the language abilities of bonobos, extensive video documentation is freely available on the Internet, including material at kanzi.bvu​.edu/.

We are scientists who have worked closely with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleagues at the Great Ape Trust, and/or have observed and interacted with the bonobos. We teach and write about the work impugned in the Book Review — because we respect its scientific integrity, because it has powerfully transformed our understanding of what apes are capable of, and because, through it, we grasp more fully what it means to share our world with other sentient creatures.

Benson and Greaves, members of Glendon’s Centre for Research on Language Contact, traveled to the United States to meet with other researchers who study bonobos earlier this year.

Republished courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin