Because children love pretend play, You can even host an imaginary tea party, run a teddy bear class, or even run your own grocery store. Now, new research shows that such deception is play It is not a talent unique to humans, great ape I also own it.
This evidence comes from a bonobo named Kanji who participated in three pretend tea party-style experiments conducted by two researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Study authors Amalia Bastos and Christopher Krupenier note that previous observations of individual apes playing alone raise the possibility that the animals engage in simulated play. Published in a magazine on Thursday science.
Previous research has shown that captive young chimpanzees Saw Twice between 2003 and 2004, I dragged what looked like imaginary blocks along the floor, just as I had played with real wooden blocks.
The female chimpanzee is observed In the wild in Uganda, chimpanzees have even been seen carrying sticks like dolls, much like mother chimpanzees carry their babies.
However, the anecdotal nature of the evidence remained questionable, the researchers said.
For example, the animals may have been imitating behaviors observed in humans rather than using their imaginations. Or perhaps apes who “pick” blueberries from pictures actually think the blueberries are real. Alternatively, if playing with wooden blocks is highly rewarding, the ape may keep repeating the same behavior. Even if the block isn’t there.
To address these concerns and provide more solid evidence, researchers conducted a controlled trial using juice and grapes in 2024, one year before Kanzi’s death, when he was 43 years old.
First, Kanzi was presented with two bottles (one empty and one filled with juice) and asked to choose which bottle contained the juice. Out of 18 trials, he chose the correct bottle each time.
Next, the experimenter gave the bonobo two empty transparent cups and pretended to pour juice into each cup from an empty pitcher. They then poured some imaginary juice from one of the cups and poured it back into the pitcher.
When asked, “Where’s the juice?” Kanzi correctly selected the cup that still contained the imaginary juice 68% of the time. This was higher than if selected randomly.
But just in case Kanzi thought there was real juice in the empty cup, the researchers performed a second task to see if he could distinguish between real and imaginary juice. In 18 experiments, Kanzi was presented with a cup of juice and an empty cup with an imaginary juice in it and asked, “Which one would you like?”
Kanzi correctly selected the cup of juice 14 out of 18 times, demonstrating that he understood the difference between real and pretend.
The final experiment required a similar setup to the first task, but grapes were used instead of juice. Kanzi was able to identify which jar contained the fictitious grapes 68.9% of the time, even faster than in the first experiment.
The researchers concluded, “The results of this study suggest that the ability to simulate objects is not unique to humans.”
“Throughout his life, Kanzi repeatedly demonstrated skills that required us to reevaluate our understanding of great ape cognition,” Nicholas E. Newton Fisher, a primate behavioral ecologist who teaches evolutionary anthropology at the University of Kent in the UK, told CNN on Friday.
“It therefore seems appropriate that he also provided experimental evidence of imagination. This is an interesting finding that lends experimental support to anecdotal reports from both captive and wild individuals,” added Newton-Fisher, who was not involved in the study.
Kanji, who died in March, was a “particularly good subject” for the study because of his language training, Bastos, now a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told CNN on Friday. Kanji was “one of the very few great apes” to understand verbal instructions, which he responded to using a dictionary of more than 300 symbols.
As part of the research center ape initiativeKanji Participate in various cognitive research projectsThese include a 2025 study showing that bonobos can point to a hidden object if they realize their human partner doesn’t know where it is.
Because of these abilities, and because Kanji was the only bonobo tested in the study, it is unclear whether the results apply to other great apes, the researchers said.
“But there are so many anecdotes like this that I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes beyond Kanji,” Bastos added.
“As the authors of this study also note, further research will be needed to generalize from Kanji to other bonobos and other ape species,” Newton-Fisher said.
But, he added, “While it is appropriate for us to have some skepticism, I think we are systematically underestimating the cognitive abilities of these species.”
Nevertheless, Professor Newton-Fisher said that while “the mental capacity of adult apes is often compared to that of human children as a benchmark for cognitive sophistication”, it must be remembered that apes have their own minds and brains. Therefore, “how imagination manifests itself in apes, for example, may not be a ‘microcosm’ of the equivalent capacity in humans.”
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