Fort Worth Zoo unveils updated primate complex, introduces Olive the two-toed sloth - WFAA

June: Hey there, and welcome to Kindred Minds. I'm June — primatologist, science communicator, and someone who genuinely cannot stop thinking about how extraordinary our primate relatives are. This show is where I get to share true stories about them — stories that are funny and moving and sometimes jaw-dropping — and explore what those stories reveal about all of us. A huge thank you to today's sponsors: Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows; Ago Consulting — pronounced "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a portfolio of companies across the silicon industry. We've got a beautiful episode today — a farewell to a chimpanzee who may have been the most studied mind in history, a wild story about what a tiny genetic mutation says about our brains and our cancer risk, and a moment at a zoo that reminded me why these spaces still matter. The thread running through all of it? How alike we truly are — in ways that might surprise you. June: Let's start with cognition — with intelligence — and with a name you may not know but absolutely should: Ai. That's A-I, spelled like the initials, and she was a chimpanzee who lived at the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University in Japan. Ai passed away earlier this year, and Kyoto University has just launched a memorial website in her honor — because she wasn't just a research subject. She was, by any honest measure, a collaborator. Scientists there called her a genius, and I don't think that word is an exaggeration. Here's what Ai could do. She learned to identify and label over 100 objects using symbols on a touch-screen computer. She could identify colors and numerals. She could look at the numerals zero through nine and arrange them in the correct order — from memory, almost instantly. But the study that really stopped the world in its tracks was the one on short-term memory. Researchers showed Ai and her son Ayumu, and other chimpanzees, a screen where the numerals one through nine appeared briefly — sometimes for less than a fifth of a second — scattered across a display. Then the numbers disappeared and were replaced by blank white squares. The chimps had to touch those squares in the correct numerical order. Ayumu, in particular, was extraordinarily fast and accurate — faster than adult humans in the same task. That's not a small thing. That's a finding that fundamentally shifted the conversation about what non-human minds are capable of. And what I love about the research at Kyoto is the philosophy behind it. The scientists there weren't just running chimps through tests. They were trying to understand the chimpanzee mind on its own terms — not as a lesser version of ours, but as a different expression of primate intelligence. Ai participated in experiments voluntarily. She could choose to engage or not. She had agency. And she did engage — consistently, enthusiastically, for decades. The memorial website Kyoto launched describes her as irreplaceable. And she is. You don't just replace a mind like that. You honor it. And I think we honor it best by letting it change how we think about what intelligence is, and who gets to have it. June: Now here's something I want to sit with for a moment, because it connects directly to Ai and to all the primate cognition research we've been talking about — and it comes from a recent discovery out of UC Davis that I find genuinely stunning. Scientists there found a small but significant genetic difference between humans and our primate cousins — chimpanzees and others — that affects how our immune cells fight cancer. Specifically, it's a mutation in a protein that immune cells use to kill tumors. In most primates, that protein does its job effectively. In humans, it has a vulnerability — a tumor can release an enzyme that essentially shuts the protein down, disabling the immune response. This is one reason, researchers think, that certain cancers hit humans harder than they hit other great apes, and it may be part of why cutting-edge cancer therapies like CAR-T cell therapy — which is genuinely revolutionary — don't always work as well on solid tumors as we'd hope. But here's the twist, and this is the part that made me put down my coffee and just stare at the ceiling for a minute. Researchers think this same mutation — this flaw in our cancer defenses — may have played a role in expanding the size of the human brain over evolutionary time. There's a hypothesis that this genetic change, by altering immune signaling in neural tissue, may have contributed to the explosive growth in brain size and complexity that defines our lineage. So we potentially traded some cancer resilience for cognitive power. That is such a profoundly primate story. We share something like ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of our D N A with chimpanzees. The recipe is almost identical. But it's in those tiny fractions of difference — a single mutation here, a regulatory tweak there — where evolution made its bets. And sometimes a bet is a tradeoff. More brainpower, more cancer vulnerability. The same genetic hand that let a chimpanzee named Ai memorize numbers at inhuman speed, and let humans build language and cities and science — that hand was shaped by these molecular decisions made over millions of years. I think about Ai looking at that screen, touching those numerals in perfect order, her brain doing something extraordinary — and I think: we are variations on the same theme. We are, all of us, running on versions of the same ancient D N A. The differences are real. But the shared recipe is deeper. June: And that brings me to the part of today's episode that I always look forward to most — the story. The human-and-primate story that lands the whole thing somewhere real and warm. And today I want to take you to Fort Worth, Texas, because the Fort Worth Zoo just unveiled an updated primate complex, and something about it genuinely moved me. Now, I know — zoo renovations aren't always headline news. But this one matters, and here's why. The updated complex isn't just about nicer enclosures, though the enriched, naturalistic habitats are genuinely better for the animals. It's about what a modern zoo primate facility signals — that we understand, now, that these animals have inner lives. That a chimpanzee or a gorilla or a colobus monkey needs more than food and space. They need complexity. They need choices. They need something that engages that extraordinary brain. The Fort Worth Zoo's new complex was designed with that in mind — with climbing structures and foraging opportunities and sight lines that give the animals a sense of agency in their environment. And then there's Olive. Olive is a two-toed sloth — technically not a primate, I know, I know — but she's been introduced to the complex as part of a broader vision of showcasing the diversity of life and the beauty of animals that aren't always center stage. And something about Olive the sloth becoming part of a primate complex delights me, because it's a reminder that this work — conservation, education, connection — is expansive. It's not just about our closest cousins. It's about cultivating a sense of wonder and responsibility for the whole living world. Here's what I believe, and what the research actually supports: people protect what they love, and they love what they know. Zoos, when they do their job well, are one of the few places where a child can look a great ape in the eyes and feel something shift. Where a family can watch a chimpanzee use a tool or a gorilla comfort her infant and think — oh. Oh, that's familiar. That's not so different from us. That moment of recognition is not sentimental. It is biological. It is true. We share the same ancient D N A. We share the same evolutionary story. And when we build spaces — whether they're zoo complexes or research centers or memorial websites — that honor the minds and lives of our primate relatives, we are acknowledging something important: that we are not alone at the top of some hierarchy. We are part of a family. A big, messy, brilliant, ancient family. June: Before I let you go, I want to mention one more thing that's happening in the world of primate research, because it's genuinely exciting. Scientists are now using computer vision — A I-powered tools that can analyze video footage — to study primate behavior in the wild. Published in Nature, this research is developing systems that can automatically track and identify individual animals, recognize specific behaviors, and analyze movement patterns across hours and hours of footage that would take human researchers years to process manually. This is huge. One of the great challenges of studying wild primates is just the sheer difficulty of observation — dense forest, long distances, animals that move fast and blend in. Computer vision doesn't get tired. It doesn't lose track. And when you train it well, it can pick up on behavioral patterns that even experienced researchers might miss. What I love about this is that it's A I in service of something deeply humanistic — understanding other minds, protecting other species. A I helping us see the primates more clearly, so that we can know them better, and care for them better. That feels right to me. June: So here's where we land today. A genius chimpanzee whose mind changed science, and whose memory now lives on a website in Kyoto. A genetic mutation that might have given us bigger brains at the cost of some cancer resilience — a reminder that we and the other great apes are running on the same ancient code, with small but meaningful edits. A zoo in Fort Worth building better spaces because we've learned that primate minds need more than a cage — they need a life worth living. And A I tools helping us see wild primates more clearly than ever before. Intelligence, feeling, curiosity, kinship — these are not ours alone. They are primate gifts. They are life's gifts. And they are better for being shared. This has been Kindred Minds, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. If today's episode sparked something in you, I'd love it if you'd subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who might need a little reminder of how connected we all are. Show notes with links to the research and stories we covered today are available — just check the link in show notes. Stay curious, stay kind, and I'll see you next time.