Kanzi, the bonobo. Kanzi, who lived in research environments his entire life, could understand English questions, point, and communicate answers. These abilities also helped him work with researchers to “play pretend” … in other words, testing his ability to imagine.
Photo courtesy of Ape Initiative
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Photo courtesy of Ape Initiative
Picture this: You’re at a pretend tea party. But instead of sitting across from toddlers in tiaras, you’re clinking cups with Kanzi—an ape with the incredible ability to communicate with humans.
NPR science correspondent Nate Rott talked to some scientists who did exactly that.
But these scientists weren’t just having pretend tea parties with Kanzi for fun. They were trying to test the limits of his imagination – because humans’ ability to imagine, to play out “pretend” scenarios in our heads and guess at the potential consequences of our actions…is key to how we live our lives. And we might not be the only animals to do it!
For more of Nate’s reporting, plus videos of Kanzi, check out the full story on NPR here. Chris Krupenye’s study can be found here.
If you liked this episode, you might also like our episode on bonobos and the evolution of niceness, and what insights monkeys offer us for the evolution of human speech.
Interested in more science about our brains and their abilities? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
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This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and Aru Nair and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer.