Research into ape behaviour

Apes understand what others see and believe, a skill previously believed to be unique to humans, according to new research from St Andrews University.

An international team of researchers, including Dr Christopher Krupenye and Dr Josep Call from St Andrews, studied apes to see if they, like humans, possess a “theory of mind” – the ability to attribute mental states, like desires and beliefs, to oneself and others.

The researchers showed videos of a human being dressed as a gorilla hiding objects behind a barrier from a human actor to chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, and tracked their eye movements to see if the apes understood how others see the world when the viewpoint differs from their own.

The findings of the study, published yesterday, challenges a long-standing view that apes can only respond to cues of others’ behaviour.

For example the direction of someone’s gaze – rather than truly understanding what others can see and believe.

Dr Krupenye, of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews University, said: “This is an important advance in our effort to determine how richly our closest relatives can understand others’ perspectives.

“It also helps to clarify which aspects of the human mind were already present six to nine million years ago in our common ancestor and which evolved uniquely in the human lineage after its divergence from the other apes.”