Reacción a "Bonobo Kanzi shows that the ability to imagine is not unique to humans"

This study by Bastos and Krupenye is of excellent methodological quality and addresses a historical challenge in primatology: how to demonstrate that an animal is imagining something that isn't there. The authors describe with great precision a capacity that until recently we believed to be exclusively human: the ability to hold two parallel realities in the mind. Kanzi is capable of operating with a secondary representation, meaning that he can project a fictional scenario (the juice game) onto physical reality (the empty cups) without the two interfering with each other. In other words, he possesses a cognitive structure that allows him to manage what is not present (by imagining) without ever losing contact with what is there.

However, an intrinsic limitation must be considered: the subject is Kanzi. We are dealing with an extraordinarily enculturated 'genius,' trained in artificial language, and with a cognitive development that, while stemming from a biological basis common to his species, has been amplified by a human environment. As with the great geniuses of our species, Kanzi sets the bar for bonobos' cognitive potential, but not necessarily the standard of what the average individual does in the jungle.

Even so, the study is consistent with the evidence accumulated over the last decade, which places great apes much closer to us in abilities such as future planning or the attribution of mental states (thinking what another person is thinking). The implications are profound: if the capacity for simulation is not exclusively human, it means that the cognitive framework for fiction, symbolism, and perhaps complex culture was already present in our common ancestor millions of years ago. Now the challenge is to understand not only what they can do, but how and why they use these mental tools in their own natural environment.