A Bonobo “Tea Party”

Once again in the popular science press,
 the data are modest, but the headlines …
are pure evolutionary IMAGINATION

“Imagination,” or Just Apeing Humans?

by John D. Wise, PhD

Headlines are buzzing with the claim that make-believe “isn’t just for humans” anymore!

Evidence for representation of pretend objects by Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo (Science, “5 February 2026). This study purportedly demonstrates that a bonobo possesses the capacity for imagination – a trait long considered a unique hallmark of the human mind.

What did the study actually show? Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of St. Andrews designed a series of “tea party” experiments for Kanzi, a 43-year-old bonobo famous for his language training. In one task, an experimenter pretended to pour juice from an empty, transparent jug into two cups, then “emptied” one of the cups. When asked “Where’s the juice?”, Kanzi pointed to the cup that was supposed to still contain the pretend liquid.

According to Nature, “This bonobo had a pretend tea party — showing make believe isn’t just for humans,” 5 February 2026. This is being hailed as the “first demonstration of pretend play in a non-human.”

Live Science, noted that “Kanzi the bonobo could play pretend — a trait thought unique to humans,” 5 February 2026.

New Scientist trumpets that this “Bonobo’s pretend tea party shows capacity for imagination,” 9 February 2026.

The Data vs. The Hype

The hype should be no surprise to anyone who understands the popular science press. While interesting for comparative psychologists, the actual results are more modest than the headlines suggest. In the juice task, Kanzi selected the “full” cup in 34 out of 50 trials (68%). In a grape-based task, he chose the pretend fruit about 69% of the time. The authors in Science argue that these

“secondary representations enable our minds to depart from the here-and-now” and represent “imaginary, hypothetical, or alternate possibilities.”

However, this is a tea party that even the Mad Hatter might find nonsensical. Several critical caveats should temper the evolutionary excitement:

• The “Enculturated” Exception: Kanzi is not a “wild” bonobo. He has spent over four decades immersed in human symbolic interaction, understands hundreds of spoken English words, and communicates via lexigrams. As the Science paper admits, this capacity was exemplified in an “enculturated ape.” If an animal is trained for a lifetime to mimic human social cues, its ability to follow a human-led script is a testament to its training, but not necessarily to its evolutionary ancestry.
• Scaffolded, Not Spontaneous: The researchers describe these experimental scenarios as “scaffolded pretense interactions.” In other words, Kanzi didn’t wake up and decide to host a tea party for his fellow bonobos. He was responding to a structured frame initiated and maintained by humans. Following a scripted as-if sequence is a far cry from the spontaneous, generative imagination seen in a three-year-old child who creates a fictional world from scratch.
• The Statistical Leap: A 68% success rate is statistically significant, but it isn’t a cognitive revolution. It suggests an ability to track socially enacted cues, but does it prove an internal “mental theater”? The researchers admitted in Science News, “A bonobo’s imaginary tea party suggests apes can play pretend,” February 5, 2026, that the bonobo’s

… guesses, Bastos [lead author of the study] says, may not have been definitive evidence of Kanzi’s internal imagination. “Kanzi is an old bonobo. Maybe his vision isn’t very good. Maybe he thinks that there’s real juice in these things,” she says.

The Grand Extrapolation

Despite the narrow and uncertain data, the researchers wasted no time in drawing grand evolutionary conclusions from this single dataset.

Our findings suggest that the capacity to form secondary representations of pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an enculturated ape and likely dates back 6 to 9 million years, to our common evolutionary ancestors. (Science)

This is a classic Darwinian trope: find a limited analogue (one might fairly call it “impoverished”) in an ape, label it with the robust human term, “imagination,” and then claim the human-animal cognitive divide has been bridged by millions of years of evolutionary continuity. CEH readers should be familiar with the trick.

But tracking a “pretend full” cup doesn’t bridge that canyon. Human imagination is not just secondary representation (their term); it is generative, symbolic, and cumulative. It is the engine of literature, myth, mathematics, theology, and science.

Conclusion:

While evolutionists seek the “roots” of the mind in the dirt of the primate enclosure, the evidence continues to point toward a fundamental distinction between humans and animals. The ability to generate and inhabit complex symbolic worlds is the gift of the Imago Dei, not an emergent property of social grooming. Once again in the popular science press, the data are modest, but the headlines are …

PURE EVOLUTIONARY IMAGINATION.

John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.

He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.

He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.