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Chimpanzees prepare for alternative possible outcomes.

Jan M Engelmann1, Christoph J Völter2, Mariel K Goddu3

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA.

Biology Letters
|June 21, 2023
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were tested on their ability to prepare for uncertainty. When facing potential threats to food rewards, chimpanzees protected both items more often when the threat was unpredictable, suggesting advanced cognitive abilities.

Keywords:
chimpanzeesfuture planningmodal cognitionreasoning

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Ethology
  • Comparative Psychology
  • Primate Behavior

Background:

  • Humans create mental models of alternative outcomes to navigate uncertainty and plan for diverse eventualities.
  • Adaptive responses to potential futures involve developing contingency plans, a behavior known as covering one's bases.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) exhibit anticipatory behaviors for mutually exclusive future possibilities.
  • To determine if chimpanzees prepare for different potential worlds when faced with uncertainty regarding a competitor's actions.

Main Methods:

  • A pre-registered experiment involved chimpanzees needing to protect two food rewards from a human competitor.
  • Two conditions were tested: one with a certain competitor target and another with an uncertain target (either of two food items).

Main Results:

  • Chimpanzees demonstrated a significantly higher likelihood of protecting both food rewards in the uncertain condition compared to the certain condition.
  • This behavioral difference suggests a sophisticated cognitive mechanism for dealing with unpredictable future events.

Conclusions:

  • The findings suggest that chimpanzees can represent and prepare for different possible future scenarios.
  • This study provides evidence for advanced cognitive flexibility and planning abilities in chimpanzees when facing uncertainty.