Hey there, you're listening to Science Friday. I'm sci-fri producer Kathleen Davis. Today on the show,

let's play pretend. Our ability to imagine is part of what makes us who we are, not just as individuals,

but also as humans. It turns out, though, that we might not be the only species that's capable

of playing pretend. In a string of experiments, scientists sat down, set the table, and hosted

pretend tea parties with a bonobo named Kanzi to see if he'd play along. And he did. For a long time,

the capacity to imagine was thought to be a uniquely human

ability. So once again, the great apes have proved us wrong. Joining me is study co-author

Dr. Amalia Bostos, a cognitive scientist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Welcome to

Science Friday. Thanks so much for being here. Hi, Kathleen.

Thank you so much for having me. So let's talk about what inspired this study. I mean,

a great ape tea party sounds like something I would dream about if I took too many melatonin gummies

before bed. Where did the idea for this come from? It actually came from Kanzi himself.

So when I first met Kanzi, we were there as a research group to try and figure out what sorts of studies we might want to run with this group of bonobos, not just Kanzi, but all his friends that lived with him as well.

And the very first thing that happened was I walked up to the glass and a PhD student was next to me and Kanzi pointed at me, pointed at the PhD student and pointed at one of

the symbols on his lexagram. Kanzi had all these symbols that he could use to communicate

what he wanted. And when we looked at the lexagram, it said tickle. And so he was basically asking me

and, you know, the PhD student to tickle each other. So because Kanzi was a celebrity in the field,

you know, if Kanzi tells you to do something, you just go ahead and do it. Forget about HR.

No one cares about that. Exactly. So we pretend tickled each other and Kanzi seemed

very entertained by that. And then he asked us to chase each other. So we, you know, pretended to

chase each other around as well. And that sort of led me down this path of wondering if, you know,

apes pretend play or have a sort of idea of what pretending might actually entail. And that's

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