Mar 13 2009
Aiming Stones and Tossing Words Around
Chimpanzees throw stuff. Not many animals do. Think about it. In a recent issue of Current Biology researchers share the finding that a male chimpanzee in a zoo has been throwing stones and chunks of concrete at zoo visitors. But that’s not all. What makes the case noteworthy is that the chimp in question has been observed over a decade finding stones and fashioning his concrete chunks into disk-like projectiles at different times and when in a different “drive state” (calm) than when later throwing them. The researchers claim theirs -
is some of the first unambiguous evidence that an animal other than humans can make spontaneous plans for future events.
Interesting. But then one of the researcher goes a bit too far, if you ask me. He says -
I would guess that they [chimps] plan much of their everyday behavior.
While I love chimps, and find in their behavior the precursor forms of many of our own behaviors, I wouldn’t got that far. Just yet. Heck, I don’t know if I’d use the word “plan” to describe how I amble from activity to activity on weekends.
Still. For a long time developmental psychologists underestimated the cognitive abilities of human infants. Why? Because it takes a lot more creativity to test the cognitive abilities of those unable to speak and respond to words than those who do not. I imagine the same holds for testing the mental abilities of other primates. And so their abilities, too, have likely been underestimated.
