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Apes Plan for the Future

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

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The research determined that, at least for this particular food exercise, apes show an ability to plan that is comparable to that of a four- to five-year-old child. Osvath, however, said such comparisons with humans are inherently flawed.

"A four- or five-year-old human would die quickly in the forest, but a chimp or an orangutan can live for 60 years and base its survival on cognition," he explained, adding that the ape skill for planning might be much more advanced than currently realized, but future studies must address the possibilities.

Apes obviously aren't sucking juice out of a straw in the wild, but the planning skills come in handy during hunting and chimp warfare, when a party sets out to organize themselves into patrols before meeting the enemy. Chimps are also known to save stones good for future nut cracking.

Additionally, there is the "I scratch your back now because I want this or that far into the future," Osvath says.

Although this latest study takes animal planning to human levels, prior work has demonstrated that birds, such as the Western scrub jay and chickens, also plan ahead. Since planning involves mental time travel, it could also mean that chickens raised for meat dread their final moments, if they learn to associate certain objects or happenings with death.

"An animal that can anticipate an event might benefit from cues to aid prediction, but may also be capable of expectations rendering it vulnerable to thwarting, frustration and pre-emptive anxiety," Siobhan Abeyesinghe, a member of the Biophysics Group at the Silsoe Research Institute, told Discovery News.

In future, such research could therefore lead to more humane treatment of captive birds and animals.

Related Links:

Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal

The Nature Conservancy

Animal Planet

Animal Cognition Network

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