Active Stocks
Thu Mar 28 2024 15:59:33
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 155.90 2.00%
  1. ICICI Bank share price
  2. 1,095.75 1.08%
  1. HDFC Bank share price
  2. 1,448.20 0.52%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 428.55 0.13%
  1. Power Grid Corporation Of India share price
  2. 277.05 2.21%
Business News/ News / World/  Chimpanzees have mental skills to cook: study
BackBack

Chimpanzees have mental skills to cook: study

Chimps have all the brainpower needed to cook, including planning, causal understanding, and ability to postpone gratification, says the study

Chimpanzees can understand the concept of cooking and are willing to postpone eating raw food, says the study. Photo: ReutersPremium
Chimpanzees can understand the concept of cooking and are willing to postpone eating raw food, says the study. Photo: Reuters

New York: They’re not likely to start barbecuing in the rainforest, but chimpanzees can understand the concept of cooking and are willing to postpone eating raw food, even carrying food some distance to cook it rather than eat immediately, scientists reported on Tuesday.

The findings, based on nine experiments conducted at the Tchimpounga Sanctuary in Republic of Congo and published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that chimps have all the brainpower needed to cook, including planning, causal understanding, and ability to postpone gratification.

They do lack the ability to produce fire. But if they were given a source of heat, chimps “might be quite able to manipulate (it) to cook," said developmental psychologist Felix Warneken of Harvard University, who conducted the study with Alexandra Rosati.

While the finding may seem esoteric, it lends support to the idea that cooking accelerated human evolution. Cooked food is easier to digest, spurring the growth of large brains in our australopithecine ancestors, Harvard’s Richard Wrangham proposed about a decade ago.

If chimps have the cognitive skills to cook, australopithecines likely did, too, said Wrangham, who was not involved in the study: “It suggests that with a little extra brainpower, australopithecines could indeed have found a way to use fire to cook food."

Archaeological evidence suggests humans began using fire 1 million years ago.

Some of the experiments confirmed studies by other scientists, such as that chimps prefer seared sweet potatoes to raw. But those tests did not test whether chimps have the mental chops to cook.

Other tests did. For instance, the scientists presented chimps with two containers. One yielded cooked food through a false bottom, not actually cooking, and one did not.

The chimps learned that one transforms potatoes from raw to cooked. Given a choice of which device to put food in, they almost always opted for the “cooker," showing they understood and willingly waited for the raw-to-cooked transformation.

Chimps did not put pieces of wood that scientists gave them into the cooker, suggesting they grasped that only food can be cooked.

Surprisingly, since chimps usually eat food immediately, they were often willing to walk across a room to cook. When the first one did this, the scientists wondered if they had a single “chimpanzee genius," Warneken said. But others showed the same ability, understanding the idea of cooking and postponing gratification to do it.

There was no evidence, however, that they understood the concept of tipping. Reuters

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Published: 03 Jun 2015, 07:05 PM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App