A chimpanzee enters a room where food is hidden in one of two
opaque containers. A human gazes at the container that hides the
food. Reaches for it with outstretched arm. Marks the container
with a wooden block. The chimp doesn’t get the message, even
though chimpanzees are one of Homo sapiens’ two closest extant
primate relatives and might be expected to figure it out.
Biological anthropologist Brian Hare and colleagues tried this
game with 11 chimps, and only two of the brainy apes used the
conspicuous cues to find the food. |Anthropologist Brian Hare,
whose field is the evolution of human cognition, with consultant
Milo| |Photograph by Stu Rosner| Dog owners may not be surprised
to learn that nine of 11 dogs in the same situation correctly
read the human signals and found the food. A control exercise
established that odor was not a cue in either trial. A wolf
raised by humans enters the room. The experimenter gazes at the
baited container. Points at it. Even taps it. The wolf doesn’t
perform above chance o