Science Friday What A Tea Party With A Bonobo Taught Us About Imagination
Feb 13, 2026
Amalia Bastos, cognitive scientist at the University of St. Andrews who studies animal imagination, talks about experiments with Kanzi the bonobo. She recounts how researchers adapted child pretend-play tests into a tea-party task. They explain controls to rule out cueing and consider whether other apes or species might imagine. Personal reflections on Kanzi and what this means for ideas of human uniqueness are woven through the conversation.
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Kanzi Initiated Play With A Lexigram
- Amalia Bastos recounts Kanzi pointing to a lexigram for "tickle" and asking researchers to tickle each other.
- That playful prompting led the team to try pretend play experiments with Kanzi and his group.
Apes Can Track Imaginary Object Displacements
- The researchers adapted a child pretend-tea task to test Kanzi's tracking of imaginary displacements using juice instead of tea.
- Kanzi pointed to the cup containing the imaginary juice more often than chance, suggesting engagement with the pretend scenario.
Control For Cueing And Confusion
- Use controls like naive experimenters and real-vs-fake comparisons to rule out cueing or confusion in animal cognition studies.
- These precautions showed Kanzi distinguished real from imaginary juice and wasn't just following subtle cues.