Even chimpanzees know when someone is relying on alternative facts, researchers find

Research shows apes are able to anticipate when someone is mistaken, and intervene to help them make better choices

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The chimpanzees of Monkey Island, a celebrated colony of former research lab captives in the jungle of southern Liberia. Orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos are the nearest relatives of humans in the primate world, and like us, they can tell when a person is wrong in their beliefs, researchers say. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:38am, 6 Apr 2017Updated: 9:54pm, 6 Apr 2017

Orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos are the nearest relatives of humans in the primate world, and like us, they can tell when a person is wrong in their beliefs, researchers said Wednesday.

“This study shows for the first time that great apes can use an understanding of false beliefs to help others appropriately,” said by David Buttelmann from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.

Great apes were willing to help a person who was mistaken about the location of an object, according to the study in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers used a test developed for human babies, about 18 months of age, to determine if they could understand when a person held a false belief - a mark of advanced social cognition.

A person would place an object in one of two boxes, while a great ape looked on.

For some of the tests, the original person would step away, while another person took the object out of the box and put it into another box.

Orangutans can work out when someone is being tricked by a third party, and will intervene to help. Photo: AP

When the original person came back, they tried to open the first box, where they believed the object to be, not realizing it had been moved.