For decades, biology and psychology textbooks have repeated a seemingly immutable truth: animals are prisoners of the present moment. The capacity for dreaming, imagining nonexistent worlds, and “pretending” was considered a privilege separating humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. That certainty was challenged in February 2026. The prestigious scientific journal Science published a groundbreaking study demonstrating that the boundaries of our imagination are not as impenetrable as previously believed. The central figure in this discovery is the bonobo Kanzi, who participated with researchers in a game of make-believe feasting.
Psychologist Amalia Bastos of the University of St Andrews and cognitive scientist Christopher Krupenye of Johns Hopkins University sat opposite Kanzi with an empty jug and two transparent glasses. The experiment was simple: the researcher pretended to pour juice into both containers. Subsequently, one of the glasses had juice “poured” back into the jug, in a simulated action.
If the bonobo relied solely on what he physically saw, he should have had two empty containers before him, and his choice would have been random. But Kanzi did not guess. In 68 percent of the trials (specifically, 34 out of 50 attempts), he reached for the glass that, according to the game’s scenario, should still have been “full.” He was similarly successful in a test with fictitious grapes, achieving a 69 percent success rate. Control tests further dispelled doubts that he was merely mindlessly repeating a learned pattern – when given a choice between real juice and the “as if” juice, he clearly and logically preferred the real one.
Researchers are calling this phenomenon “secondary representation.” It means Kanzi was able to hold two models of the world simultaneously in his mind: the primary, physical reality (the glasses are empty) and, above it, a fictional layer (there is juice in one glass). This ability is fundamental in humans for planning the future or understanding the thoughts of others. The authors of the study, however, remain cautious, pointing out that What we have is not proof of a universal ability in all great apes. Kanzi was unique – an individual long trained in symbols and living in close proximity to humans, which may have specifically shaped his brain.
Kanzi, who died in 2025 at the age of 44, was not just another statistic. He was a celebrity in cognitive science, and his home was the Ape Initiative research center in Iowa. He didn’t learn language mechanically, but rather “absorbed” it by observing his adoptive mother, Matata, and human researchers, much like small children learn. He learned to communicate using lexigrams – a special keyboard with hundreds of abstract symbols – understood hundreds of English words, was able to make a stone tool, and responded to complex sentence instructions.
Bonobos, often mistakenly considered merely a subspecies of chimpanzee, are now recognized as a distinct species that diverged from chimpanzees one to two million years ago. Often nicknamed the “hippies of the rainforest,” bonobos are known for their complex social dynamics and conflict resolution through social contact rather than aggression. This complex social structure and the need to “read” other members of the group may have been an evolutionary basis for their high intelligence.
Indications of animal imagination existed previously, but lacked definitive proof. Primatologist Richard Wrangham previously documented chimpanzee females carrying sticks in a manner strikingly reminiscent of caring for infants – as if they were playing with dolls. An earlier 2006 study by Heidi Lyn’s team suggested that representational play appears primarily in great apes who have undergone symbolic training.
Combining these fragments of evidence with the 2026 experimental data moves the debate forward. It does not imply that great apes have the same, expansive imagination as humans. But it does suggest that the ability to create “second worlds” in the mind likely did not arise only with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Its roots may go back as far as 6 to 9 million years, to the common ancestor of all of us. Kanzi’s invisible juice, does not signify the end of the differences between us and them, but shows that the gap between the human and non-human mind is much shallower than we have long believed.
