problem solving skills, Chantek exhibited certain intuitive and thinking character traits comparable to the rationality used in human engineering. His intellectual and linguistic abilities made some scientists, including Miles and Dawn Prince-Hughes, regard him as possessing personhood. Orangutan personhood and conservation The term personhood is often ascribed by experts to animals who demonstrate conscious awareness, language, and acculturation. Miles and like-minded advocates seek to expand personhood to great apes, to the extent that—eventually—legal rights of personhood would be conferred under the law. To accomplish this goal, Miles created Project Chantek, to further study the mind of the orangutan. She hopes her research will help ascertain how human symbolic systems evolved and developed. Uniquely, her project emphasizes development of cultural models and processes in Chantek's upbringing. Her work is supported by the Chantek Foundation, whose mission is to develop greater scientific understanding of orangutans, to support cultural and language research with orangutans, to promote orangutan conservation and establish culture-based great ape sanctuaries, thereby building a bridge of understanding between humans and great apes. The Chantek Foundation is a member of ApeNet, founded by musician Peter Gabriel to link great apes through the internet, creating the first interspecies internet communication. The project was cancelled. See also Birutė Galdikas Great ape language Primate cognition Jeffrey H. Schwartz List of individual apes The Mind of an Ape Theory of mind References External links FAQs at Chantek Foundation web site The Ape Who Went to College – documentary on Chantek OrionSociety.org – 'Does an Orangutan find Freedom in the Gift of Words? Do We?', Susanne Antonetta (March, 2005) CNN.com – 'Gifted orangutan lets his fingers do the talking', CNN (November 28, 1997) Orangutan.org – Orangutan Foundation International 1977 animal births 2017 animal deaths Individual primates in the United States Apes from language studies Individual orangutans