Bonobos point more for ignorant than knowledgeable social partners.

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 c

SUBMITTER: Townrow LA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11831142 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature