Windows - video

Kikongo and our Reaching Window task. Kikongo is totally crazy. He likes to jump around and around in circles until he gets dizzy and falls down. Here, he’s supposed to be doing the test by figuring out how to get the banana on the ledge. The trick is that if you open the window it pushes the banana off the ledge, so you have to reach around through the other window.

Kikongo thought it would be more fun to suck on the glass.

Benny the bonobo is the world champion of this game. He beat chimps, gorillas, and orangs in Uganda, Germany, and everywhere else. It’s supposed to test if you understand the causality in the physical world. So do bonobos understand the glass will cause the banana to fall? Can they figure out they have to reach around?

I failed it. Richard Wrangham, famous Harvard primatologist also failed it.