Chantek (December 17, 1977 – August 7, 2017), born at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, was a male hybrid Sumatran/Bornean orangutan who mastered the use of a number of intellectual skills, including American Sign Language (ASL), taught by American anthropologists Lyn Miles and Ann Southcombe. In Malay and Indonesian, cantik (pronounced chanteek) means "lovely" or "beautiful". Early life Born at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Chantek was transferred to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) when he was nine months old. Miles was the director of a research project to study apes, and she and a few student volunteers cared for him the first several months after his arrival. Dr. Miles taught him his first signs, "food-eat" and "drink". Soon after this her teaching schedule made it necessary to hire an assistant, Ann Southcombe. Ann had experience raising seven baby gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo and was the first "mother" and "teacher" for Michael, the young gorilla companion to Koko, the first signing gorilla. Under the direction of Dr. Miles, Chantek was raised much as a human child yet also had time to be an orangutan. Ann toilet trained Chantek, much as she did Michael. He was given chores, like pick up his toys or sit for a signing test for which he was given an allowance, using steel washers as money. After years of service, she hired a full-time assistant to give Chantek all the benefits of early education. As Miles taught anthropology at UTC, she also gathered a group of dedicated student volunteers to help with the project, such as Warren Roberts, who now teaches anthropology classes at the college as of Spring 2017. Chantek spent almost nine years living under constant supervision in a specially adapted trailer on the UTC campus. He went to classes regularly and was so beloved by the academic community that his photo was included in the school yearbooks. However, as his size increased, and as containing him in his compound became a problem, the administration feared an accident, and they returned him to Yerkes following an incident in which he escaped from his compound and caught a female student by surprise by prohibiting her from retreating in a test of strengths with the student. For the next eleven years of his life, he was confined to a small cage, where he entered a depression and put