ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Bonobos point more for ignorant than knowledgeable social partners.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Utterance evolution: the road to generative, combinatorial communicators.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- The expression of self-conscious emotions and their motivational and communicative function in early development.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Mental representation of the locations and identities of multiple hidden agents or objects by a bonobo.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Reply to Tauzin: How to implement novelty in theory of mind tasks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Communicative mentalization is limited in nonhuman great apes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Informing does not require attributing ignorance.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Reply to Royka and Santos: Representing ignorance, and the evolution of theory of mind.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Postnatal dependency as the foundation of social learning in humans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Bonobos point more for ignorant than knowledgeable social partners.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Audience effects in sooty mangabey agonistic behavior.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Numerous uniquely human phenomena, from teaching to our most complex forms of cooperation, depend on our ability to tailor our communication to the knowledge and ignorance states of our social partners. Despite four decades of research into the "theory of mind" capacities of nonhuman primates, there remains no evidence that primates can communicate on the basis of their mental state attributions, to enable feats of coordination. Moreover, recent reevaluation of the experimental literature has questioned whether primates can represent others' ignorance at all. The present preregistered study investigated whether bonobos are capable of attributing knowledge or ignorance about the location of a hidden food reward to a cooperative human partner, and utilizing this attribution to modify their communicative behavior in the service of coordination. Bonobos could receive a reward that they had watched being hidden under one of several cups, if their human partner could locate the reward. If bonobos can represent a partner's ignorance and are motivated to communicate based on this mental state attribution, they should point more frequently, and more quickly, to the hidden food's location when their partner is ignorant about that location than when he is knowledgeable. Bonobos indeed flexibly adapted the frequency and speed of their communication to their partner's mental state. These findings suggest that apes can represent (and act on) others' ignorance in some form, strategically and appropriately communicating to effectively coordinate with an ignorant partner and change his behavior.
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