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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 6, 2026

Behavioral Assessment of Manual Dexterity in Non-Human Primates

Behavioral Assessment of Manual Dexterity in Non-Human Primates

Published on: November 11, 2011

Can orangutans (Pongo abelii) infer tool functionality?

Nicholas J Mulcahy¹, Michèle N Schubiger

¹School of Psychology, McElwain Building, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia, njmulcahy@live.com.

Animal Cognition

|October 18, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Orangutans may reason about tool functionality. In tasks, they inferred tool usefulness by observing cues, demonstrating cognitive abilities previously thought limited to humans.

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Area of Science:

Primate cognition
Animal behavior
Comparative psychology

Background:

The capacity for abstract reasoning about unobservable properties, such as tool functionality, is debated in non-human apes.
Understanding tool use and inference in apes provides insights into the evolution of cognitive abilities.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether orangutans can infer the unobservable functional properties of tools.
To differentiate between inferential reasoning and simple preferences in tool selection tasks.

Main Methods:

Orangutans were presented with various tool tasks requiring inference of functionality from observational cues.
Experiment 1 involved choosing between a broken and unbroken tool with hidden middle sections.
Subsequent experiments used a bent tool to control for configuration preferences versus inferential reasoning.

Main Results:

Initially, orangutans preferred aligned tools, suggesting a potential configuration bias rather than pure inference.
Further experiments indicated this preference was influenced by task demands, such as memory load.
In a final experiment, with reduced task demands, orangutans demonstrated an ability to infer tool functionality.

Conclusions:

Orangutans possess the cognitive capacity to reason about the unobservable functionality of tools.
Previous apparent biases were likely due to task-specific cognitive load, not a lack of inferential ability.
This study provides evidence for sophisticated reasoning in orangutans regarding tool properties.