Krupenye and co-author Luke Townrow, a Johns Hopkins Ph.D. student, worked with three male bonobos, Nyota, 25; Kanzi, 43; and Teco, 13, all living at Ape Initiative, a research and education ...

If, however, the bonobo had witnessed the grape placement taking place without Townrow’s knowledge, he would quickly point to the correct cup. Apes point out hidden treats only when humans are ...

Because bonobos are brainiacs, pinpointing the cup with the treat should have been no sweat. But there was a wrinkle: the apes were relying on a human, not another member of their own species ...

A recent experiment found that bonobos can understand when a human lacks knowledge and will often step in to help a human out. Host Marco Werman spoke with Chris Krupenye, an evolutionary cognitive ...

For the first time, their exercise demonstrated that apes perform this “seemingly simple” mental process. Once familiar with the objective, the bonobos understood that they would get a treat ...

To investigate this, Townrow and Christopher Krupenye, also at Johns Hopkins University, tested if three male bonobos at the Ape Initiative research centre in Iowa could identify ignorance in ...

Apes don’t just act on instinct—they recognize when someone lacks information and actively help them out! In a controlled study, bonobos pointed out hidden treats to unaware humans, demonstrating a ...

Next, the team plans to explore the bonobos’ motivations for sharing information and the way that they think about other individuals’ minds. “What we’ve shown here is that apes will ...

Now imagine your friend is a bonobo. Turns out, that doesn’t change things much. A groundbreaking study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that apes ...