The film illustrates how Kanzi's language emerged in activities that are normal to apes, such as travelling in the woods and finding food, but these activities were enriched with linguistic interaction […] Sue asks Kanzi to break some sticks for the fire they are making and he immediately does so. In another scene Kanzi suggests, on the keyboard, that he wants to go to a particular place in the forest but Sue is not sure what he means, so she makes guesses in English to which Kanzi listens attentively. When she finally guesses correctly, Kanzi nods and begins to walk.

Caregivers continually ask Kanzi what he wants to eat or do, they inform him what is about to happen, they ask him for help to collect and return bowls and toothbrushes, and if occasionally a caregiver tries to organize these matters without coordinating linguistically with Kanzi or Panbanisha, she soon has to deal with a group of very obstinate bonobos.

Kanzi wears headphones and responds to word recognition tasks formulated by a researcher in an adjacent room. In other tests, Kanzi responds to novel sentences formulated by Savage-Rumbaugh, who hides her face behind a welder's mask. The purpose of the test design was to eliminate the gestures, glances and other contextual features that also characterize normal communication between humans, but that are seen by many linguists and ape language critics as ‘extra-linguistic assists’. (14)