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The ability to imagine things that aren't real is a fundamental part of the human experience. Scientists have long suspected some animals also have the ability to imagine and play pretend. NPR's Nate Rott reports on a new study that shows at least one can.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: It's important to note before we really get into it that the subject of this new study is a pretty remarkable ape. This isn't his first time on NPR.
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ADAM COLE, BYLINE: Kanzi is a bonobo, a smaller cousin of the chimpanzee. He doesn't use hand...
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Kanzi - he's the world's most famous bonobo and a bit of a show off. But Kanzi's little sister...
ROTT: Kanzi was raised in captivity and lived that way the rest of his life. He died last year at the age of 44. But what got him full-page pictures in Time magazine and National Geographic, with an accompanying video segment for the latter, was his ability to communicate with humans using symbols and his comprehension of the English language.
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UNIDENTIFIED CARETAKER: Look right at the camera. Good boy. You're doing so good. Just a couple more.
JOEL SARTORE: I realize as they talk to Kanzi, he understands almost everything they say.
ROTT: A study published in 1993 found that when Kanzi was 8 years old, he could outperform a 2-year-old human when given more than 600 spoken instructions.
CHRIS KRUPENYE: We don't know exactly what he grasped, but you could ask him a question and often he would respond in the way that he should.
ROTT: Chris Krupenye is a cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University and a coauthor of the new study. He worked with Kanzi before he died.
KRUPENYE: And one of the ways he could respond is through pointing, and that's not a common behavior for apes. They don't typically point in the way that humans do.
ROTT: Krupenye says this ability to point allowed researchers to more or less ask Kanzi questions like they would a human child. And the question Krupenye wanted to answer is whether animals also have the cognitive ability to make believe.
KRUPENYE: Kids will have tea parties with their dolls. They might have an imaginary friend. They might play house with their friends. So they're showing these roots of imagination within the first years.
ROTT: And there's been observations of apes in the wild and in captivity doing similar things.
KRUPENYE: Young female chimpanzees have been observed carrying around sticks or logs in ways that look like they're treating them like a doll or a baby.
ROTT: What's less clear is whether they're actually playing pretend, which is why Krupenye set up a series of controlled experiments with Kanzi to test, for the first time, whether one of humanity's closest relatives can track an imaginary object by running an experiment very similar to what psychologists have done to test imagination in kids.
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UNIDENTIFIED RESEARCHER: All right. So let's play a game. Let's find the juice, OK?
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ROTT: Think of it like a really sterile tea party - Kanzi on one side of the table, a human partner, a researcher, on the other.
KRUPENYE: And on the table, the partner would put two empty, transparent cups.
ROTT: Before pretending to pour juice into them from an empty, transparent pitcher. They'd then pretend to pour the imaginary juice from one of the cups back into the pitcher.
KRUPENYE: And at that point, there's only one bit of imaginary juice left in the remaining cup, and the partner pushed the table forward and asked Kanzi, where's the juice?
ROTT: And roughly 70% of the time, Kanzi would pick the right one. Now, Krupenye says this is an experiment of one individual and a pretty unique one at that. So more research is needed to make a broad generalization about whether all bonobos or other apes can do this. But the fundamental question of whether only humans can imagine...
KRUPENYE: For that question, all you need is one clear demonstration to say, no, it's not unique to humans.
ROTT: And he thinks this new study published in the journal Science is that. Nate Rott, NPR News.
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