Can animals play pretend? It took a tea party with a bonobo to find out. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. In a set of experiments, a ...

A bonobo named Kanzi surprised scientists by successfully playing along in pretend tea party experiments, tracking imaginary juice and grapes as if they were real. He consistently pointed to the ...

Little kids hosting make-believe tea parties is a fixture of childhood playtime and long presumed to be exclusively a human ability. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University presented evidence in a new ...

A bonobo that took part in a pretend tea party like those acted out by young children has shown that our closest primate relatives have the capacity for make believe. Kanzi the bonobo (Pan paniscus) ...

Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo, identified and tracked pretend objects across tea party-like experiments, marking the first controlled demonstration of imagination in a nonhuman animal In three ...