Kanzi (October 28, 1980 – March 18, 2025), also known by the lexigram (from the character 太), was a male bonobo who was the subject of several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo since the 1990s, Kanzi exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude.

Kanzi was born to Lorel and Bosandjo at Yerkes Field Station at Emory University in 1980. Shortly after birth, Kanzi was stolen and adopted by a more dominant female, Matata, the matriarch of the group.^{[citation needed]}

In 1985, Kanzi was moved to the Language Research Center at Georgia State University. He was later relocated, along with his sister, Panbanisha, to the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Iowa. The ill-fated facility, founded in 2004 by local businessman, Ted Townsend, closed after losing funding, experiencing allegations of neglect, and a flood.^{[citation needed]}

In 2013, the Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative (ACCI), under the direction of Jared Taglialatela, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and Bill Hopkins, a professor at Georgia State University, took over the facility.

When the ACCI took over Kanzi's care in 2013, he was severely obese due to mismanagement of his diet and activity. His new caretakers changed Kanzi's diet to a more species-appropriate one and increased his opportunities for physical activity. Kanzi subsequently lost over seventy-five pounds.

As an infant, Kanzi accompanied Matata to sessions where Matata was taught language through keyboard lexigrams, but showed little interest in the lessons. It was a great surprise to researchers then when one day, while Matata was away, Kanzi began competently using the lexigrams, becoming not only the first observed ape to have learned aspects of language naturalistically rather than through direct training, but also the first observed bonobo to appear to use some elements of language at all. Within a short time, Kanzi had mastered the ten words that researchers had been struggling to teach his adoptive mother, and eventually learned a further 348, which he could also combine for new meaning. When he heard a spoken word (through headphones, to filter out nonverbal clues), he pointed to the correct lexigram. He was able to initiate communication using the lexigrams. Sue Savage Rumbaugh, in 2006, claimed Kanzi understood about 3,000 spoken words.

According to a Discover article, Kanzi was an accomplished tool user.

Kanzi's adoptive mother, Matata, was believed to be in her mid-to-late 40s when she died in June 2014. In the matriarchal society of bonobos, a male's position is primarily determined by the position of the females he is related to. Matata was the group's chief leader so his status as the highest ranking male was established by being adopted as her "son". According to Smithsonian magazine, Kanzi "has the mien of an aging patriarch – he's balding and paunchy with serious, deep-set eyes." This description is confirmed by a full-page color photograph of Kanzi in the March 2008 National Geographic, and a full-page black-and-white photograph in Time magazine.