Like Us, Chimpanzees Can Plan for Alternate Futures
We long assumed Humans were the only animals capable of such complex thinking, but yet again, we are proved wrong
Hiya!
You know, this is such a special time to be alive, and yet, I feel like so few people are aware. Sure, there is plenty of chaos going on, and we’re teetering on the brink of many possible futures, but we’re also learning extraordinary things. Things that are challenging everything we thought we knew — specifically, everything we thought we knew about ourselves. Especially regarding our supposed uniqueness compared to the rest of the natural world.
In our quest to understand consciousness, scientists routinely discover that the differences between us and the rest of the animal kingdom are far fewer than ever assumed. Viewing animals as soulless or incapable of complex thinking or emotions made it far easier to view them as “less than.” Now, experts are learning that many animals share a myriad of traits and cognitive abilities with us. New research about chimpanzees adds even more evidence showing that animals aren’t as different from us as we thought.
Modal Reasoning
Our brain remains an enigma in that experts still don’t fully understand everything about it or how it works, but one thing we have learned is that the brain is a prediction machine — one that never stops.
The brain’s ultimate goal is to predict the future so we can plan accordingly and survive whatever comes our way. One way the brain predicts the future is known as modal reasoning, which the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines as:
Modal reasoning is central to human cognition since it is pervasive both in philosophy and in everyday contexts. It involves investigating and evaluating claims about what is possible, impossible, essential, necessary, and contingent. Some things could have been different than they actually are, other things could not have been. And some things could have more easily been true than other things.
Modal reasoning is often credited for why our species spread and advanced as we did. It’s so important that we develop the ability in early childhood. Though, exactly what age in childhood modal reasoning begins has been debated. Some researchers believe children between 1 and 2.5 years old can consider multiple outcomes. In contrast, others don’t think kids develop the ability until closer to age 4 when they can talk about their thought process.
Either way, it’s long been assumed that no other animals can manage such an accomplishment. This idea was supported by a 2017 study, which concluded that primates lack the ability to prepare for mutually exclusive outcomes. Yet, the study was socially rejected by other experts because the experiment compared the behaviors of chimpanzees to human children.
The researchers expected the chimps to engage in behaviors that are more natural to human children than to chimps. Jan Engelmann at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead researcher in the study I’ll tell you about next, explains:
“To demonstrate competence, they had to cover both exits of a Y-shaped tube with the palms of their hands. I’ve worked for 12 years with chimpanzees now, and I’ve never seen them show this behavior.”
But, new research took a different approach, this time designing an experiment more suited to chimpanzees’ natural behaviors. Their results contradict the 2017 study by showing that chimps are perfectly capable of thinking ahead and planning for two possible outcomes.
New Research
Engelmann and his team devised two experiments where chimpanzees had to protect two food items from a human competitor. If they succeeded, the chimpanzees got to keep both pieces of food as a reward. The researchers explain in the study:
In one condition, chimpanzees could be certain about which piece of food the human experimenter would attempt to steal. In a second condition, either one of the food rewards was a potential target of the competitor.
Ultimately, they found that chimpanzees were far more likely to protect both food items in the second experiment than in the first. The results suggest chimpanzees can consider and effectively prepare for different possible futures.
Engelmann states:
“To my knowledge, they’re the first [non-human] animals who demonstrate competence in a task measuring the representation of alternative possibilities.” […] “The representation of alternative possibilities is fundamental to many cognitive capacities that humans are proud of, like creativity and morality. It’s quite exciting to think that there might be an evolutionary history to this ability as well.”
If true, not only does this further challenge our concept of what it means to be Human, but one of the study’s researchers, Mariel Goddu, at Harvard University, believes it supports the argument suggesting language is not required for the ability. Meaning it’s likely human children as young as 1 or 2 years old can engage in this form of complex thinking.
Perspective Shift
The more I learn, the more I think it’s time we rethink human exceptionalism, which I wrote about recently — and that was before I knew about today’s topic. The fact that chimpanzees engage in similar prediction methods to us only adds more evidence to the research showing that we have much more in common than people tend to realize. More than that, sentience is shared widely among living things, even plants.
Sure, chimpanzees, or any other animal, aren’t likely to dominate the planet quite like we have. But many of the things we attribute to being exclusively “human-like,” such as the ability to love and demonstrate compassion, think critically, and now plan for conflicting futures, are shared by other animals. It’s humbling, to be sure. Considering all of this, it seems to me that perhaps the most significant differences between us and the rest of the animal kingdom come down to ideas — and what we do with them.
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