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Decoding Academia 36: Revenge of the Chimpanzees (Patreon)

Published:
2026-07-04 06:42:02
Imported:
2026-07
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In this Decoding Academia episode, we venture into comparative psychology, where the central question is not whether great apes are clever but how much of the social world they understand before we start asking them for advice on how to deal with modern politics.

The focus is a fascinating line of work by Fumihiro Kano and colleagues on great apes, eye tracking, memory, anticipation, and Theory of Mind. By showing apes short videos and tracking where they look, researchers can ask whether they expect others to act based on what those others have seen, know, or falsely believe — which is either a remarkable window into the evolutionary roots of human social cognition, or the most elaborate way yet devised to ask a chimp what it thinks of a man in a costume.

We discuss what this kind of research might reveal about social intelligence across species: whether apes understand intentions, knowledge, and false beliefs; how their abilities compare with humans, dogs, and other animals; and why studying minds without language requires equal parts ingenuity, caution, and tolerance for participants who may simply decide the whole enterprise is beneath them.

There is also some discussion of the usual complications: small samples, difficult data, flexible analyses, replication, and the gap between a beautifully designed experiment and a result we should treat as settled fact. But the main story is the genuinely intriguing attempt to study Theory of Mind beyond humans.

Along the way, we discuss chimpanzee costumes, zoo life, dogs, and the disturbing possibility that crocodiles may be running more sophisticated cooperative hunting operations than most university committees.

Relevant paper for the episode (attached):

Kano, F., & Hirata, S. (2015). Great apes make anticipatory looks based on long-term memory of single events. Current Biology, 25(19), 2513-2517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.004

Kano, F., & Call, J. (2017). Great ape social attention. In Evolution of the brain, cognition, and emotion in vertebrates (pp. 187-206). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

Comments

Linda Sears

This sounds fascinating! I’m looking forward to listening.

Hew Dog

Is this about Joe Rogan?

Roland Weber

Thanks, very interesting and entertaining! 😄 An anecdote regarding the "forest vs. zoo" question: Sean Carroll and his wife were taking care of a feral cat for quite some time, and he reported about it in the AMAs. After the first winter, they got it to a veterinarian and then had to keep it locked inside for a couple of weeks. Once the cat got used to being warm, dry and well-fed, it never wanted to leave again.

Don Schaffner

I would say that this pairs perfectly with watching the Fourth of July parade. Except that’s kind of mean to chimpanzees.

Not Insane

Don't know much from comparative psychology, but man that JD Salinger...

Foggers

Have there been any studies examining whether researchers are just weird? This one might qualify.

Emma

Re. the diff between zoos and natural environments. The late great Frans de Waal wrote about this. His theory is in chimps society is male dominated because male's form tight alliances while females live scattered at the far edges of the territory and thus don't interact with each other much. As opposed to bonobos where the females form tight alliances and rule the males who are more.... um individualistic I guess. But anyway he said in the zoos, even good ones, chimps cannot mimic their natural social structure because there is not physically enough space which means the females also live with the other females. And he said that he had observed that this had let to captive female chimps forming alliances with other female chimps resulting in basically less gender inequality in the zoo compared to in the wild. The alpha males still rules but he has to keep in the good graces of the females. For instance there was an example where an older weak male stayed in power long after his best before date because the females all liked him and would not let a younger male take over. These were obviously based on observation of a few groups rather than proper controlled studies but I think its fascinating.

Linda Sears

My twin and I enjoyed listening while watching a hapless squirrel desperately attempt to get into a bird feeder. People interested in the visual arts have done studies tracking eye movements of viewers looking at artworks to understand what we look at the most and how compositional elements affect what our eyes come back to. Artists also use the eyes of subjects in their paintings to tell us what or who to look at.

Melinda

I initially heard Great Apes as Grade Eights. And so it remained. My son is in what we call Year 8 and is probably relatively verbally communicative for a teenaged boy but I couldn't stop substituting chimpanzees for year 8s.

Matt Dear

cladistically apes are monkeys. sorry.

Melinda

Matt, my Great Ape/Grade Eight and I were particularly delighted with your comment bonobos, do they know things, let's find out 😉

Dylan Gibson

Unfortunately I dont think Australian Magpies are corvids. Just independently intelligent. :)