Watch Kanzi the bonobo pretend to have a tea party
Little kids hosting make-believe tea parties is a fixture of childhood playtime and long presumed to be exclusively a human ability. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University presented evidence in a new paper published in the journal Science that a bonobo named Kanzi was also able to participate in pretending to hold a tea party. For the authors, this suggests that apes are capable of using their imagination just like human toddlers.
“It really is game-changing that their mental lives go beyond the here and now," said co-author Christopher Krupenye. "Imagination has long been seen as a critical element of what it is to be human, but the idea that it may not be exclusive to our species is really transformative. Jane Goodall discovered that chimps make tools, and that led to a change in the definition of what it means to be human, and this, too, really invites us to reconsider what makes us special and what mental life is out there among other creatures."
Per Krupenye et al., by the age of two, human children are able to navigate imaginary scenarios like a tea party, pretending there is real tea present even if the teapot and cups are actually empty. Cognitively speaking, it's an example of secondary representation, because it involves decoupling an imagined or simulated state (pretending there is actual tea in the cup) with the reality (the cup is empty).