Secular Café: Planet of the Apes....it's real!

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Planet of the Apes....it's real! May 11th 2012, 09:54 Quote: Chimpanzee Uses Innovative Foresighted Methods to Fool Humans ScienceDaily (May 10, 2012) — Chimpanzee Santino achieved international fame in 2009 for his habit of gathering stones and manufacturing concrete projectiles to throw at zoo visitors. A new study shows that Santino's innovativeness when he plans his stone-throwing is greater than researchers have previously observed. He not only gathers stones and manufactures projectiles in advance; he also finds innovative ways of fooling the visitors. The study, which was carried out at Lund University, has been published in PLoS ONE. The new study looked at the chimpanzee's ability to carry out complex planning. The case study shows how humans' closest relatives in the animal kingdom appear to be able to plan to deceive others, and that they can also plan their deception inventively. The behaviour of the chimpanzee Santino is of particular interest because it is done while the humans to be deceived are out of sight. That means that the chimpanzee can plan without having immediate perceptual feedback of his goal -- the visitors to the zoo -- to aid in his planning. The subject of the study is Santino the chimpanzee, who achieved international fame in 2009 for his habit of gathering stones and manufacturing concrete projectiles to throw at visitors from the safety of his enclosure at Furuvik Zoo north of Stockholm. His behaviour was reported as an example of spontaneous planning for a future event, in which his psychological state was visibly quite different from that of his subsequent aggressive displays. Previously, such cognitive abilities had been widely believed to be restricted to humans. .... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0510100225.htm

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