For a person, imagining a scenario or pretending something is present that is not. It may seem like such a simple thing to have a tea party with no tea, or pretend that someone is invisible and cannot be heard. These things are not easy to prove that animals of any kind are able to do because there is no way to communicate with or read the minds of animals. 

At around the age of 2 years, a human child is able to use the full extent of their imagination and usually show signs of it around 15 months old. Apes are the closest animals to humans and have shown signs of imagining things. Young female chimps have once been seen carrying sticks like baby chimpanzees and a captive chimp once appeared to be pretending to carry around blocks after playing with some wooden blocks. Though these may seem like sure-fire ways to prove that apes can imagine, none of these are true proof because it may have just looked like they were doing something. 

The closest ancestor to humans in the animal kingdom is the bonobo. Because people can imagine, the Ape Initiative in Iowa thought that maybe the bonobo could too. Kanzi is a 43 year old bonobo that has been living in the sanctuary for many years. They chose Kanzi because he can respond to verbal queues by pointing. Kanzi has been able to do other amazing things in the past like play Minecraft. The experiment was done by using a researcher at a table with Kanzi and pouring an empty, transparent pitcher into an empty, transparent cup with another “empty” cup on the table. The scientist asked Kanzi which cup had the juice and he pointed to the correct cup. They repeated this many times and Kanzi always chose the “full” cup. 

For the next experiment, the scientist pretended to eat a grape and then put a grape into one of 2 jars. Kanzi then chose the correct jar. He didn’t get completely correct each time but overall he was quite accurate. The applications of this are that the scientists want to repeat this experiment with other apes and later other animal species in order to see what animals have an imagination and what do not.