Overview
- Kyoto University’s Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior said Ai died on 9 January from age-related multiple organ failure while surrounded by staff.
- Ai was the central subject of the Ai Project, which the center says established an experimental framework for understanding the chimpanzee mind and guided thinking on human cognition.
- Primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa reported in 2014 that Ai could recognise Arabic numerals zero to nine, 11 colours, more than 100 Chinese characters, and the English alphabet.
- Researchers introduced a computer-linked keyboard when Ai was 18 months old; by age five she had mastered numerical naming from one to six and could label the number, colour and object of hundreds of samples, according to a 1985 paper.
- In 2000 she gave birth to Ayumu, later known for exceptional memory in studies of parent–child knowledge transfer; outside experiments she painted, and media once reported she used a key to unlock her cage.