Bonobo Kanzi Proves Apes Can Use Their Imagination Too

When researchers asked Kanzi the bonobo to play a pretend tea party game, he didn't just humor them. He actually understood the difference between real and imaginary juice, fundamentally changing what we know about animal intelligence.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University worked with Kanzi, a 43-year-old bonobo living at the Ape Initiative, to test whether apes can truly use their imagination. The experiment was beautifully simple: pour pretend juice from an empty pitcher into two empty cups, pour one back, and ask Kanzi where the juice is.

Kanzi chose the correct cup 68% of the time across 50 trials. That's not luck, that's genuine understanding of pretend play.

The team wanted to be absolutely certain Kanzi wasn't confused about what was real. So they ran another test with one cup containing actual juice and one cup with imaginary juice, asking which he wanted to drink.

Kanzi picked the real juice nearly 78% of the time. He knew exactly what was pretend and what was real, proving he could hold both concepts in his mind at once.

"It's extremely striking and very exciting that the data seem to suggest that apes, in their minds, can conceive of things that are not there," said researcher Amalia Bastos. Kanzi can generate an idea of a pretend object while simultaneously knowing it's not real, a cognitive skill scientists thought only humans possessed.

The research team also tested Kanzi with pretend grapes. An experimenter would mime taking a grape from an empty container, place it in one of two transparent jars, then pretend to empty one jar before asking Kanzi where the grape went.

Again, Kanzi chose correctly 69% of the time. His success wasn't a one-time fluke across different scenarios.

Why This Inspires

This discovery joins the ranks of other paradigm-shifting animal research. When Jane Goodall discovered chimps make tools, scientists had to redefine what makes humans special.

Now we're doing it again. Imagination has always been considered a uniquely human trait, part of what separates us from every other species on Earth.

But Kanzi shows us that the mental capacity to dream up things that don't exist might be shared across species. Other apes could possess rich inner lives we've never given them credit for, complete with make-believe scenarios playing out in their minds.

Kanzi grew up exposed to human culture and can use over 300 symbols to communicate. Whether other apes without his unique upbringing share this ability is the next question researchers want to answer.

The implications stretch far beyond tea parties. If apes can imagine, they might be capable of planning future scenarios, understanding stories, or even experiencing forms of creativity we haven't recognized yet.

One bonobo's pretend tea party just opened a window into the hidden mental worlds of our closest evolutionary relatives.