Carmen runs away from the language research centre where she grew up to be a smart and cheeky teenager. Outside she discovers fear, hunger and the incomprehensibility of man. She ends up in a cage. There she makes eye contact with a man, Mercier, a father to be, applying for his first job. Mercier learns .to appreciate her real worth. But how much can she learn from him and his kind? Carmen is a young Bonobo, cousin of the chimpanzee.