Apes can see things from your perspective and help you out
5 April 2017
Apes can see things from your perspective and help you out
By Sam Wong
Our closest evolutionary relatives are quite the mind readers. And they can use that knowledge to help people figure things out when they are labouring under a misapprehension, according to the latest research.
The ability to attribute mental states to others, aka theory of mind, is sometimes considered unique to humans, but evidence is mounting that other animals have some capacity for it.
In a study last year, chimps, bonobos and orangutans watched videos of people behaving in different scenarios as cameras tracked their eye movements. The experiment found that the apes looked where an actor in the video would expect to see an object, rather than towards its true location, suggesting the animals were aware others could hold false beliefs.
But that experiment left open the possibility apes were simply predicting that the actor would go to the last place he’d seen the object, without understanding that he held a false belief. Now, David Buttelmann at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues tested 34 zoo chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, in search of more conclusive evidence.
More:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2126950-apes-can-see-things-from-your-perspective-and-help-you-out/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=news&campaign_id=RSS%7CNSNS-news
= new reply since forum marked as read
Study finds great apes know when people are wrong and are willing to help them
AFP-JIJI
APR 6, 2017
MIAMI – Orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos are the nearest relatives of humans in the primate world, and like us, they can tell when a person is wrong in their beliefs, researchers said Wednesday.
Great apes were also willing to help a person who was mistaken about the location of an object, according to the study in the journal PLOS ONE.
“This study shows for the first time that great apes can use an understanding of false beliefs to help others appropriately,” said by David Buttelmann from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
Researchers used a test developed for human babies, about 18 months of age, to determine if they could understand when a person held a false belief — a mark of advanced social cognition.
More:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/06/world/science-health-world/study-finds-great-apes-know-people-wrong-willing-help/#.WOb1LojyvIU
And amazing.
