represent relations between agents and untrue
states of the world (Martin and Santos, 2016).
In more recent experiments tracking the eye
movements of various kinds of ape watching
movies featuring humans, the apes have passed
the false-belief test, too (Krupenye et al., 2016).
Heyes (2017) argues, though, that what they
were doing was not mentalising but ‘submen-
talising’: predicting behaviour using ‘low-level,
domain-general psychological processes’ that did
not evolve for reading others’ minds (p. 1). But she
stresses that this is not to belittle the apes: we use
similar mechanisms a lot of the time, and ‘Unless
one needs to discuss behaviour, or to catch a
Hollywood spy, submentalising may be the smart
option’ (p. 2).
Ravens have also been shown to differentiate
between competitors who know where their
food is hidden and those who do not (Bugnyar
and Heinrich, 2005). In experiments with ravens hiding food, birds protected their
caches and pilfered from others differently depending not just on whether they
had seen other birds around them when the food was hidden, but also on whether
or not there had been obstacles obstructing other birds’ view of the hiding place.
Despite many ingenious experiments, Premack and Woodruff ’s question has
still not been satisfactorily answered, and we still do not know which species, if
any, have ‘anything remotely resembling a “theory of mind” ’ (Penn and Povinelli,
2007). We have, however, learned that there are profound differences between
the mental abilities of even closely related species, reminding us to take great
care over any assumptions about consciousness.
IMITATION
Humans are ‘the consummate imitative generalist’, says psychologist Andrew
Meltzoff (1988, p. 59). We imitate each other spontaneously and easily, and even
infants can imitate sounds, body postures, and actions towards objects per-
formed by adults. By 14 months of age toddlers seem to know when they are
being imitated by adults and take pleasure in it (Meltzoff, 1996). As adults, we
imitate far more than we may realise. We copy the body language of people we
like and mirror their facial expressions when engrossed in conversation. In this
way, imitation underlies the capacity for empathy. Variations in levels of empathy
(whether measured as a personality trait, or as a response to environmental cues,
cultural differences, or similarity between the imitator and the imitated person)
have also been shown to correlate with the amount of imitation, especially if the
person being imitated is attractive (Müller et al., 2013). It is perhaps because imi-
tation seems so easy that we tend to think of it as a trivial skill and assume that
other animals can do it as easily as we can. They cannot.
Nineteenth-century scientists like George Romanes and Charles Darwin assumed
that dogs and cats learned by imitation, and that apes could ‘ape’, and they
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE
THAT ANIMAL?FIGURE 10.12 • Do chimpanzees have a theory
of mind? Can they understand
what another person can and
cannot see? In Povinelli’s
experiments, chimpanzees were
just as likely to beg for food
from an experimenter who had
a bucket over her head as from
one who could see.