Chapter 1. Can Chimpanzees Plan Ahead?

Short Description

For the past thirty years, researchers at Georgia State University have been studying the mental skills of chimpanzees. Are the animals able to plan ahead?

Long Description

The maze task assesses the chimpanzee’s ability to look ahead in time. Some have assumed that this capacity is uniquely human. However, given the chimpanzees’ needs to locate food and to defend themselves, it seems reasonable to believe that they may engage in planning.

Pansy shows unusual skill in running multiple choice mazes that she has never seen before. In fact, her performance often surpasses that of humans. She takes few wrong turns in the maze and often sees the solution faster than her human counterparts. Pansy’s capacity to see the solution to a maze reflects a very active prefrontal lobe system. The researcher concludes that she is a genius.

The findings indicate that the ability to see possible solutions, and to plan before acting, is not a uniquely human skill. The researcher suggests that in addition to planning ahead, chimpanzees are capable of reflecting on the past. The animals’ capacity to do so, however, is more limited than that of humans.

Questions