Apes can see things from the perspective of others

摘要

Apes may be even more like us than we thought. They appear to anticipate that a person's actions will follow his or her beliefs, even when they know the beliefs are wrong - an ability never before demonstrated in non-human primates. The capacity to infer what others might be thinking, known as theory of mind, is central to what makes us human, and is reflected in the ways we cooperate and communicate, says Christopher Krupenye at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Humans, for example, possess an awareness of false beliefs held by other individuals, recognising that the thoughts of others don't necessarily reflect reality.