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Apes 'can guess what others are thinking', King Kong study finds

Chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans all show the ability to tell when someone has been tricked, a study finds.

Image: Scientists are hoping to learn which aspects of human psychology we share with apes
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Apes share the human-like ability to guess what others are thinking, according to scientists.

The theory was tested on a group of chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans with a homemade video of an actor and another person dressed in a King Kong costume.

In the clip, the human watches King Kong hide an object in one of two boxes. He then leaves the room, and King Kong moves the object to a different place.

Researchers tracked the apes' eye movements individually to see how they reacted upon seeing the human return.

Sure enough, the animals looked intently at the original spot in anticipation of the person searching there.

Study co-leader Fumihiro Kano, a comparative psychologist at Kyoto University in Japan, said that even though they knew the object had been moved, they understood the human believed it would still be in the original spot.

An understanding of others' thoughts and feelings was believed to be a cognitive ability exclusive to humans prior to the study, the scientist said.

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Empathy is at the heart of human social behaviour, said study co-leader Christopher Krupenye, a comparative psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.


Human children fully develop this understanding by around age four or five.

By studying the animals, scientist are hoping to learn which aspects of human psychology are unique to people and which are shared with apes.

Previous research has shown that apes can reason about others' goals and intentions, know what others can see, and understand what others know based on what those others have seen, Mr Krupenye said.

The study is published in the journal Science, at Duke University, in North Carolina.

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