Amazing stuff!
"Key Takeaways
- Apes can intuit another’s ignorance, an ability thought to be uniquely human.
- When apes know their partners are ignorant, they will point them toward missing information.
...
Krupenye and co-author Luke Townrow, a Johns Hopkins PhD student, worked with three male bonobos—Nyota, 25; Kanzi, 43; and Teco, 13, all living at Ape Initiative, a research and education nonprofit.
During the experiment one of the bonobos would sit with Townrow, facing each other across a table, the ape on the other side of metal gate. The bonobo would watch as a second person placed a treat, a grape or a Cheerio, under one of three cups. Sometimes Townrow could see where the treat was going, sometimes he couldn't. The bonobo could have the treat if Townrow could find it.
Whether or not Townrow saw where the treat was hidden, he'd say, "Where's the grape?" and then wait 10 seconds. If he'd seen the treat being hidden, during the 10 seconds the ape would usually sit still and wait for the treat. But when Townrow hadn't seen where the treat was hidden, the ape would quickly point to the right cup—sometimes quite demonstratively. ..."
From the abstract:
"Numerous uniquely human phenomena, from teaching to our most complex forms of cooperation, depend on our ability to tailor our communication to the knowledge and ignorance states of our social partners. Despite four decades of research into the “theory of mind” capacities of nonhuman primates, there remains no evidence that primates can communicate on the basis of their mental state attributions, to enable feats of coordination. Moreover, recent reevaluation of the experimental literature has questioned whether primates can represent others’ ignorance at all. The present preregistered study investigated whether bonobos are capable of attributing knowledge or ignorance about the location of a hidden food reward to a cooperative human partner, and utilizing this attribution to modify their communicative behavior in the service of coordination. Bonobos could receive a reward that they had watched being hidden under one of several cups, if their human partner could locate the reward. If bonobos can represent a partner’s ignorance and are motivated to communicate based on this mental state attribution, they should point more frequently, and more quickly, to the hidden food’s location when their partner is ignorant about that location than when he is knowledgeable. Bonobos indeed flexibly adapted the frequency and speed of their communication to their partner’s mental state. These findings suggest that apes can represent (and act on) others’ ignorance in some form, strategically and appropriately communicating to effectively coordinate with an ignorant partner and change his behavior."
Kanzi, a bonobo, was part of the study
Fig. 1 Experimental setup during knowledge and ignorance trials from the bonobo’s perspective
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