Animal consciousness has long been assumed to be a nonviable arena of investigation. At best, it was thought that any indications of such consciousness, should it exist, would not be interpretable by our species. Recent work in the field of language competencies with bonobos has laid this conception open to serious challenge. This paper reviews this work and the case it makes for our impending capacity to tap the consciousness of a uniquely enculturated group of bonobos who are capable of comprehending human speech and employing a lexical communication system.