Bonobo Imagination: Pretend Play Seen in Kanzi, Not Just Humans
A 2024 Johns Hopkins study tested Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo, in three pretend-play tasks to see if great apes can imagine pretend objects. Kanzi correctly identified imaginary juice and a fictitious grape across trials (about 68% accuracy in their juice tests; 14/18 for imaginary juice vs real juice; 68.9% for the pretend grape), suggesting pretend-object representation is not uniquely human. Experts caution that results come from a single subject and may not generalize to other apes, calling for more research on ape imagination; Kanzi died in March 2025.
