Decoding the Gurus - Decoding Academia 36: Revenge of the Chimpanzees *Patreon Series*

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

In this Decoding Academia episode, we venture into comparative psychology, focusing on a fascinating line of work by Fumihiro Kano and colleagues on social intelligence and theory of mind in great apes. By showing apes short videos and tracking where they look, researchers examine whether they expect others to act based on what they have seen, what they know, or what they falsely believe. This approach offers a remarkable window into the evolutionary roots of human social cognition or, alternatively, the most elaborate way yet devised to explore what a chimp thinks of a man in a chimpanzee costume.We discuss what this kind of research might reveal about social intelligence across species: whether apes understand intentions, knowledge, and false beliefs; how their abilities compare with humans, dogs, and other animals; and why studying minds without language requires ingenuity, caution, and tolerance for participants who may simply decide the whole enterprise is beneath them.There is also some discussion of the usual complications: small samples, difficult data, flexible analyses, replication, and the gap between a beautifully designed experiment and a result we should treat as settled fact. But the main story is the genuinely intriguing attempt to study Theory of Mind beyond humans.Along the way, we discuss chimpanzee costumes, zoo life, dogs, and the disturbing possibility that crocodiles may be running more sophisticated cooperative hunting operations than most university committees.*The full episode is available on Patreon (57 mins)*00:00 Introduction03:57 Chimpanzee Theory of Mind & Eye Tracking13:03 Attention, Grabbing and Orientation24:03 The Role of Memory in Anticipation26:10 Revenge of the Researcher31:21 Statistical Concerns43:44 Comparative Psychology Thoughts49:13 Non-climbing Tigers and Cooperative Crocodiles51:20 Matt's New Friends and OutroRelevant papers for the episode:Kano, F., & Hirata, S. (2015). Great apes make anticipatory looks based on long-term memory of single events. Current Biology, 25(19), 2513-2517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.004Kano, F., & Call, J. (2017). Great ape social attention. In Evolution of the brain, cognition, and emotion in vertebrates (pp. 187-206). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus. Decoding academia. Yes, it still exists. Can we do on this sub-production of the coding, the Gurus, look at academic articles and research or things that have caught our eye and dig into the griddy a little bit more. And Matt, you suggested this. Something caught your eye.

So why don't you let the listeners know, what a day you brought to the class today? Well, I came across this one on YouTube actually, just so not the most academic. Good promising. But I thought, oh, that's interesting. And it's about Great Apes. And yeah, their social cognition, their attention, I suppose.

It seemed like this Japanese researchers, in particular, Frumihiro Cano. And along with collaborators, of course, there are always collaborators, have done some interesting work using eye tracking to see what the great apes slash monkeys are into, what they're paying attention to, and using that plus some, yeah, imaginative use of stimuli, including videos involving him getting dressed up like a monkey, sorry, great aid. Is it him?

I think so. I think it could be him. Okay. Well, oh, yeah, because I wasn't sure. Like I saw the videos, somebody is in a kind of chippancy costume of sorts by them. I didn't know if it was Cano or other people. And for those who care about these kind of incidental details, the relevant paper is a current biology paper from 2015 called Great Apes Mesares,

make anticipatory looks based on long-term memory of single events. That's the study that the video is from by Fumihiro, Kano, and Satoshi Hirata. And you sent me a review article that is a chapter in some book that is called Great Ape Social Attention by Fumihiro, Kano, and Joseph Kahl. So I read both of them up because that's the kind of guy that I am. Yeah, yeah. So you took your homework project much too seriously. I just read the chapter on Great Ab's Social Attention, which I thought was a fun overview of all the research that I've been doing. But you wanted to look into their methods and dig deep. So fine, fine. How do you even know? I did that, ma'am. But I did do that and I did look at follow-up research. Also, I have, at least previously during my PhD, I was interested in. this area and wrote some review articles. Now, I guess it was my master's course. I wrote some

review articles on this topic. So once upon a time, I did know the research area relatively well. Well, I know stuff all about it. So I will defer to your expertise on this one. Oh, dear. That's right. So the on this is on you. Get it right, Chris. Don't get it wrong. Don't get it wrong. I did like that this chapter, one of the things that they're talking about, and this is a thing which people who are familiar with developmental psychology or other types of psychology where you cannot rely on verbal explanations for various reasons, right, either different species or because the... They can't talk. Yeah. So you've got to come up with all the ways to investigate the topic, right? And one of the methods that is used

with small infants and other species is eye tracking. What are they looking at? And they, in this chapter, are noting that they have developed better ways using infrared technology or something. Anyway, their eye tracking technology has improved. Now they're better able to track the movement

of what chimpanzees mainly in this chapter. but they are talking about other species as well. But what they are looking at when they look at images on the screen or little scenarios being played out. And it's also quite funny that you might, these are the kind of details that I think are very useful for people to look at when they're trying to get a handle around research because it's not enough to have like a thing that can track a chimpanzee's eye movements, right?

How do you get the chimpanzee to stay in the location that you wanted to. One of the ways that people used to previously do it was like strap tanked chimpanzee and like its head not able to move. Obviously, they don't like that much, right? So that's, that wasn't great. But now they've developed methods which are like better where they don't do that. They allow them more freedom.

But to keep them roughly stable, they give them like a little straw poking out of the wall, which is delivering like a tasty drink. But it's coming very slowly. So they have to keep sucking on it to get it. And then at the other side of the plastic screen, they are playing things on the monitor. So I thought that's quite a novel way to keep their attention. That's clever. Yeah, carrot rather than stick.

The monkey's happier and you get better that data. That's a win-win. Yes. Yeah, that's right. So anyway, using these eye trackers. And I've used these two. With humans. with humans, yeah, with humans

and colleagues have as well. Actually, as you can imagine, they're quite expensive devices and the software and stuff with them and it's made by specialized companies. Actually, just yesterday, I was talking to someone at my school and it was complaining because he spent like $15,000 on these eye-tracking equipment and then the company got bought by another company and now basically, and it's like a licensing arrangement,

you know, like a subscription model. And basically they're useless. Like unless he pays an extra $50,000 something like that, it's junk you can't use them anymore so that's upsetting anyway um that's by the bye so so what they get is these uh videos or pictures which have like heat maps superimposed on them which uh give you a sense of what is capturing the uh chimpanzees attention right that's right and you can follow in real time with red dots or however like kind of being superimposed of the image or you can look at heat maps at the end that show, you know, overall where things fixated during images.

They also use these in studies when they're examining developmental disorders or cognitive impairments that mean you have issues with like social cognition because you can look at, you know, where people are attending to when they're looking at social scenes and so on. So it's a flexible technology and yeah, and it produces often like interesting results. One of the funny things this people are, it's not funny, my high, hope you're around for me to say this, but they look at what do chimpanzees look at

when they see another chimpanzee, right? And with humans, it's the same kind of thing, right? We look at eyes and then we go down to the mife, but chimpanzees spend more time on the mife because their mumps are potentially more expressive, unless the genitals

are visible. And that said they spend more time looking at their genitals and they do. at the VSO. I was like there's so much like us Chris it's spooky

you can all identify with that yes look at all the butt I think I saw a big red heat map on Chitpense's butt well genitals and butts are closely

distributed on most pirates they like big up in anyway so that's fair that's fair they are primates after all.

So, but Chris, set the stage for us. So that's like methodology. Okay, eye gaze, attention, all that stuff. But big picture, why are we even interested? Why do we care? Are we interested in just attention per se? Or are we interested in whether they can have, I don't know, a theory of mind, whether they understand intention, other kinds of social cognition.

What's it all about? All terms, Mark, that you're assuming people have some. familiarity with. I think theory of mind is specialized vocabulary and it refers to the ability to imagine someone else's mind, right? Another member of your species or another individual's having a separate mind from you, right? So you know something, but does that other agent know that? And you can only model that if you're able to model agents with different levels of knowledge or information, which is quite a complex thing that we don't think about because in general, humans do it all the time as adult versions. But kids actually have to develop this and you can do various studies with young kids that show that they don't have it up to the age of about three.

the exact time frame is like debated, but basically earlier in life, children think what they know, everyone else knows, even if they've no way to learn it. And then as they develop cognitively, they come to separate out others know different things and they get better at it, right? And a perennial question with other species, but particularly other social primates,

is the extent to which they are modeling other members of their species minds, or are they instead relying on kind of predictive associations where when this kind of behavior exists, they predict this kind of response. So it's not dearest on modeling and other agents' intentions and knowledge structure. It's more just like a kind of behavioralist response set. And yeah, so people are interested in, is this ability where theory of mind exclusive to humans?

Does it exist in all of related permits or other species? And if so, to what extent? So, yeah, theory of mind is a popular topic, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's super important for stuff that you really care about, like social or cultural transmission, right? Yes. Because in order to do social learning or observational learning, it obviously helps if you can put yourself in the position of the actor that is observed. Could be a big, experienced, wise chimp who is wise in the ways of knowing how to get ants out of a log or something like that.

You're a young, naive chimp. It's all new to you. If you can observe the other chimp, see what they're doing, put yourself in their position, that's obviously going to help you to learn those. skills and enhances that cultural transmission of knowledge. So it is kind of important, right, for advanced species, I suppose, who are, I guess, do, you know, not having to figure out everything else, everything for themselves or alternatively don't have kind of hardwired behavioral repertoires. But the extent to which you need fear of mind for that, for social learning to take place is a public discussion, right? Because you can learn.

by imitating what And Ola is doing without like thinking too much about their state of mind, right, or what their goal is. But that's one of the questions is the extent to which, you know, that is helpful, like focusing on intentional goals versus road reproduction of behavior or this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So that brings us down to about 9.4, I think, Chris, where they got a little diagram. there showing like probably one of the most simple case of co-orienting attention to others. So a little schematic diagram there showing like a figure, the figure kind of sees an object,

then the figure is reaching towards the object. You skip the spot. Okay. The figure sees the object. Okay, the figure is looking away. Okay, B, the figure sees the object. C, the figure begins reaching towards the object. and D, the figure is actually touching the object.

The reason I stepped to you, Matt, is because the point of that schematic diagram is there's a pair of eyes watching, and they oriented towards the object when the eyes move to it, not when the gesture moves, right? So that's why I was just pointing out before the reach, there's a look, and that's when the attention shifts in this little diagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I seem to remember other research, which was looking at eye gaze, and how important and silent it is for social cognition more generally in Great Apes as well as humans, right? Yes, yes.

Though the extent to which humans use it in order to generate like shared intentionality is, I think, substantially greater than all other species. and the other species which use it, you know, to signal and to orientate themselves do so, but like not in this way. Like you can imagine a human pointing two fingers at their eyes and pointing at something in the distance, right? And people will look, but you don't see other species in general, any other species doing that, even when they do cooperative hunting, right? I could imagine a female chimpanzee like pointing up their eyes and going, hey, hey, headland, eyes up here, stuff looking.

Well, you know, notable exception, Matt, interested in exception is pointer dogs, you know, dogs, but those are dogs that we have specifically bred in order to have a pointing behavior. But also, because of dogs, very long history of domestication with us, they are also one of the other species

that responds better than most other species to orientating gestures from humans, because they've learned to heed those signals. But they don't relate to all their dogs, right? You don't see a dog like, get to go, huh? It's true. My old dog, who was pretty smart, would definitely do that, good at orienting, whatever.

My current dogs, they're as dumb as rocks, and they don't respond to any orienting signals whatsoever. Yeah. Also, half-blonded deaf, I think it doesn't help. It's an interesting thing, though, because you can see with this that like cooperative hunting behavior, right? Like there's lots of species that are very good at hunting together, right? Wolves and lions and killer rails and so on. But for the most part, they do it and they do communicate to each other when they're engaged in those activities.

But pointing is a very obvious thing that would be useful, but they don't do it in general, right? they use calls and body positioning and so on. But yeah, you know, each species is unique in its own way. But I just feel like, you know, especially with dogs, they can learn to register, you know, that a human pointing at something wants to orientate them towards it. But yet their limitation means they don't use that for a lot of members of their species through like, you know, steal the bone or something. Yeah, stupid dogs.

Yeah, stupid, limited dollars patients. Okay. They evolved a bit more era. That's on them. That's on them. Now, but to be clear, right, I think what's being illustrated in this figure 9.6

is like the figure is not attempting to communicate that, oh, please look over here at the triangle. The figure is just naturally orienting towards the triangle and the observer is naturally going, well, they're interested in the triangle, I'm interested in the triangle now too. So it's kind of, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have to be intentional sharing of attention. Like it can be other people monitoring.

What are you looking at? What are you trying to, like a policeman looking at a guy in a stripy top with like a mask on? Like, where are you going to go, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, so yeah, gays can be involved, can involve intentional. communication, often warning people off or, you know, hey, I'm watching you. I think great apes do do that a bit. But also just normally with observational learning, being cued into what the actor is paying attention to, attending to, is obviously going to be quite useful in

understanding, you know, and modeling their behavior. So I think it's also connected to that intentional stance that is, I think, a recurrent theme, right? model, you know, it may not require a proper theory of mind. You may not be, you know, deeply kind of empathizing or imagining what's going on in the act his head. But a basic bias towards assuming intentionality is incredibly, that's an incredibly useful heuristic, I think. Yeah.

That's, so it is. It is. And they've got various neat experiments that show that it is something, which, you know, as you said, although great eb is engaging, like monitoring gears and using that as a signal of attention. Okay,

so in the next section here, they've got a little thing sort of contrasting the effects of watching a video, both infants and primates, and in one condition, there's like a human hand, and the other condition,

there's like a metal or a plastic claw on a stick. Do you want to take us through that, Chris? Yeah, it's just looking at like where using this kind of eye tracking paradigm, if you see a hand, like reach for two objects, like in this case, it's like a rubber duck and a frog. And you're kind of habituated or familiarized that that hand is wanting a specific object. And then you change the locations of the objects. and the hand approaches again.

Where do you anticipate that it's going to reach, right? And you don't see a face or anything like that in this video, so it's kind of saying, okay, you know, a recognizable human hand, do you infer that it's going to go for the object that you've seen at grasping in the habituation phase? And so they set that up, and then they look where the gaze goes, right,

to see whether they anticipate preference for the object that they were habituated to anticipate to be a preference for. And they did the same thing with like a claw, like a robot claw. So it's a thing which can pick things up, but which is not the kind of obvious animate object attached to, in this case, a human. They could use the chimpanzee hand, but it would have been probably harder the chimpanzee to do it.

So, yeah, so, and they find that in the case, of the human hand, they detect the anticipatory gears, but not with the robot hand, indicating that this might be associated with agentic

cues. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting, isn't it? That, you know, both for infants and apes, basically they see a hand, like a human hand in this case, and like the inferences that they've

learned that, okay, the hand that belongs to a person is interested in the frog. So if you switch them around, it's probably going to go for the frog again. But that inference isn't extended to the claw. They notice, yeah, bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans do the similar kind of thing in this context. So there you go. It's a good example, right, that you anticipate the pattern. But it's not, the interesting thing of like the robot claw is it's not just due to the mechanical movements or the directions that things are moving, right? Because of the difference between that control condition, it indicates that, like, it's attached to... Yeah, a person. It's going to look like a person. Otherwise, they don't make the same

inference about intentionality. So that's... If you put a big octopus hand, like a tentacle heart, what do you mean? Would it work with a human have... I think there's not such a silly idea. Like if it had an organic kind of thing, where does the thing break down? Because the apes are obviously extending their model to include humans, right? So you've already gone from like a black, furry arm, right? They're quite happy to extend intentionality to humans and presumably vice versa. So it'd be interesting to know where it actually breaks down and whether or not octopus

would be in or out of the set. I believe the term in this literature is like corn specific is the same species and aloe specific is the same close family, right? So we are aloe specifics with chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. And you can look for differences, right? They do, I think, later in it where they're looking at which ones follow the gaze and they're showing them chimpanzees and humans and bonobos and the orangutans. tanks and looking at whether they only care about cons-specifics or aloe-specific models.

So, yeah, a tentacle would definitely be out of the aloe-specific. But it would be, you know, associated with an agent, so and it would move like an agent. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I generally don't know. I think there could be, there could be a broad kind of thing towards organic movement. Yeah, a robot hand would do the same thing, I think, as well. Like, if you had a metal hand-shaped thing, it would probably activate the same stuff, right? If it moved like a organic hand.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, anyway, so memory, the role of memory in anticipation as well. It doesn't stop there. This is where it gets on the good stuff. This is what triggered you to look up this paper. And so the video was associated with this, right? That's right. So the thing that I enjoyed.

was he had this idea to to record videos for you know checking and studying their attention and recording videos that they find would find interesting right and i think that's kind of a big part of it and i found it interesting too so so so you had a couple of researchers in the video um i think that they both kind of got bananas and then the researcher for mehito cano dressed it up in an ape costume comes rushing out of a door in the back wall and sort of pretends to beat on one of the humans and takes their banana and then runs off again. So that's the video.

So the apes watched that. They enjoyed that, sipping on their juice, watching the video. Good fun. And then on the second day, 24 hours later, they watched a similar video again. Yes. This study is not the one that I watched. So I don't think something changed in this one.

Was it just that they were looking whether they anticipate where the movement is going to come from? Yeah. That's right. So I mean, the dentist have done dozens of different permutations of these paradigms, right? So that's why we're not sure. But the one that I saw,

it was just a basic check of anticipatory looking. So could they remember? So they remembered what was going on, you know, with the thing. So they're watching the same video. It looks like the same video again. the researchers there with their bananas and the apes were looking at the doorway from which the ape-like figure emerged from previously. So they basically could remember the scenario and were looking at it in an anticipatory way

towards where the interesting stuff was going to happen. Right, but you did see the yellow video with the weapons, the follow-up study. I think they called it the revenge of the research. Yeah. So that one, this is the one that is the study that I mentioned at the start, the paper. I read the paper for it. So it is a setting in a captive chimpanzee enclosure where researchers are doing things and they have a little platform that they normally use to do these kind of experiments on. So it's a setting the chimpanzee is familiar with, like a cage with various tools to play games. And then they have. have a researcher who is attacked by a person in a chimpanzee costume, who opens the door, goes outside the cage, and like bangs on the head of the researcher, and then turns around and faces the wall sitting down. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,

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