February 3, 2025
3 Minimal reading
Bonobos knows when humans do not know something
Experiments show that Bonobos can be understood when human beings are insufficient and can be found in the right direction.
Some captive bonobos have recently faced simple tasks. Find a delicious snack hidden under one of the 3 cups. Since Bonobos is Brainiacs, it should have no sweat to find the cup as a snack.
But there was wrinkle. The apes depended on the right cup to humans, not other members of his species. More badly, this person sometimes didn’t know where the food was. So Bonobos took himself to point out the right cup to a human partner.
Johns Hopkins University’s evolutionary cognitive scientist Christopher Krupenye said, “Bonobos was ignorant. Check that their ignorant partners still make the right choice I communicated in advance.
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Krupenye and his graduate student Luke Townrow National Academy of Sciences USA procedure. Their research results provide evidence The apes can help to infer someone’s ignorance and solve confusion..
that The ability to infer others’ mental state It is often called the theory of mind. Humans use the theory of mind to successfully communicate and adjust each other. For example, if someone lacks certain information, it will intuitively share the knowledge and determine how to share and methods.
Researchers suggest that chimpanzees and bonobos, the closest evolutionary cousin of man, can have the theory of mind. But according to the author, few have surveyed this idea in a controlled experimental environment.
Krupenye and Townrow worked with the three male bonobo, who lives in APE COGNITION and Conservation Initiative, a research center in Iowa Des Moines. During the experiment, one of the male bonobos was sitting across towns with snacks such as grapes and peanuts, and was under one of the cups on the table between them. Bonobo will be rewarded if Townrow overturns the right cup.
In some exams, Townrow could see that treatment was placed under the cup. In other cases, his view was blocked by cardboard. When the treatment was hidden, he waited 10 seconds before the cup flipped.
Bonobos seemed to know when Townrow watched the snack. In his trials where he observed the placement of snacks, the apes waited patiently until he turned the right cup overturned. But in a trial where Townrow’s view was blocked, Bonobos pointed out for the right cup to fill him with what he missed. Townrow said, “They immediately took on the mission and knew where to go.
The oldest man of Bonobos, a man named Kanzi, was particularly empirical in his gestures to make Townrow wisely. Currently, 44 -year -old monkeys are always looking for delicious snacks, and during the study, he repeatedly pointed and tapped to attract Townlow’s attention and secure his hospitality.
According to Michael Tomasello, a comparative psychologist of Duke University, who is not involved in new research, chimpanzees can consequently discriminate ignorance and revise communication. I found it in the 2012 paper Wild chimpanzees made vocalization to warn a group colleague who seemed to not know nearby snakes.. Similar abilities were observed in human infants. Tomasello said, “They point out that others are still unfamiliar while others are still on the diaper.
This suggests that the ability to reason and act in others’ ignorance can go back to the last common ancestor of humans and Bonobos, who lived 8 million to 6 million years ago. According to Laura Lewis, a biological scholar of Berkeley California, this level understands is possible without language. “This discovery points out that our great monkey cousin represents both the knowledge and ignorance of others and uses these attributes to guide communication behavior without requiring complex languages. study.
However, it is not clear whether the apes point out simple treatment or whether they have a greater motivation. “Do Bonobos know that communication is changing someone’s mental state? [knowledge] What evolved later from human evolution? ” Krupenye says.
The team is eager to make fun of this question with future work for Bonobos. However, in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this great apes are in danger of endangered due to loss and hunting. Krupenye hopes to emphasize how much this apes are similar to us. “Bonobos plays an important role in understanding our place in the natural world,” he says.
