A bonobo’s imaginary tea party suggests apes can play pretend

Humans may not be the only primates with the power to imagine. During a make-believe tea party, a bonobo named Kanzi kept track of invisible juice and imaginary grapes, researchers report February 5 in Science.

The findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that ape minds can imagine scenarios beyond the “here-and-now,” a skill once thought to be unique to humans. Human children begin playing pretend as early as 12 months old and master the ability to build imaginary worlds by age 3. Many high-level thinking tasks are possible only because we can imagine things that aren’t really there.