Chimpanzees are self-aware and can anticipate the impact of their actions on the environment around them, an ability once thought by some people to be uniquely human, according to a new study.
Although many people would think it obvious that animals such as chimpanzees are self-aware, scientific proof is important for this to be claimed as fact.
The findings challenge assumptions some people make about the boundary between human and non-human, and shed light on the evolutionary origins of consciousness, the researchers said.
Earlier research has demonstrated the capacity of several species of primates, as well as dolphins, to recognise themselves in a mirror, suggesting a fairly sophisticated sense of self. The most common experiment consisted of marking an animal such as with paint, in a place - such as the face - that he or she could only perceive while looking at their reflection. If the animal sought to touch or wipe off the mark while facing a mirror, it showed that the animal recognized him or herself.
But although this test reveals a certain degree self-awareness, scientists wanted to know how animals were actually taking in the information.
To investigate this, scientists at the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto designed a series of three experiments to see if chimps, our closest cousins genetically, to some extent think like humans when they perform certain tasks.
In the first, three females initiated a video game by placing a finger on a touch-sensitive screen and then used a trackball, similar to a computer mouse, to move one of two cursors. The movement of the second cursor, designed to distract or confuse the chimps, was a recording of gestures made earlier by the same animal and set in motion by the computer.
The ‘game’ ended when the animal hit a target, or after a certain lapse of time. At this point, the chimp had to identify with his finger which of the two cursors he had been manipulating, and received a reward if she chose correctly. All three animals scored above 90 percent.
"This indicates that the chimpanzees were able to distinguish the cursor actions controlled by themselves from those caused by other factors, even when the physical properties of those actions were almost identical," the researchers said.
But it was still not clear whether the good performance was truly due to the ability to discern ‘self-agency’, or to observing visual cues and clues, so the researchers devised another set of conditions. This time they compared two tests. The first was the same as in the previous experiment. In the second, however, both cursors moved independently of efforts to control them, one a repeat of movements the chimp had generated in an earlier exercise, and the other a repeat of a ‘decoy’ cursor. The trackball, in essence, was unplugged, and had no connection to the screen.
If the animals performed well on the first test but poorly on the second, the scientists reasoned, it would suggest that they were not simply responding to visual properties but knew they were in charge.
The final experiment, used only for the most successful of the chimps, introduced a time delay between trackball and cursor, as if the two were out of sync, and a distortion in the direction the cursor moved on the screen.
All the results suggested that "chimpanzees and humans share fundamental cognitive processes underlying the sense of being an independent agent," the researchers concluded. "We provide the first behavioral evidence that chimpanzees can perform distinctions between self and other for external events on the basis of a self-monitoring process."
OneKind is opposed to experiments that cause any harm or use wild animals in captivity, such as in this case. However, we report on the findings of such experiments when they advance our understanding of animals and their minds and will benefit animals in the long-term.
Evidence such as this which shows that chimpanzees do indeed think about themselves in a similar way that we humans do can only help efforts to improve our treatment of these highly intelligent sentient animals. The more we learn about what goes on in the complex minds of our closest living relatives, the more people are agreeing that there can be no moral justification for using and abusing them in experiments or imprisoning them in zoos for our entertainment. OneKind will continue to work for a world in which all animals are free from harm and exploitation and can live our their natural lives in peace.