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Apes Save Tools for Future Use Nicholas J. Mulcahy, et al. Science 312, 1038 (2006); DOI: 10.1126/science.1125456

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REPORTS

Apes Save Tools for Future Use
Nicholas J. Mulcahy and Josep Call* Planning for future needs, not just current ones, is one of the most formidable humancognitive achievements. Whether this skill is a uniquely human adaptation is a controversial issue. In a study we conducted, bonobos and orangutans selected, transported, and saved appropriate tools above baseline levels to use them 1 hour later (experiment 1). Experiment 2 extended these results to a 14-hour delay between collecting and using the tools. Experiment 3 showed that seeing the apparatusduring tool selection was not necessary to succeed. These findings suggest that the precursor skills for planning for the future evolved in great apes before 14 million years ago, when all extant great ape species shared a common ancestor. ulving (1) recounts an Estonian tale of a girl who dreamed about attending a party but was unable to eat her favorite dessert because there were no spoonsavailable. Facing the possibility of attending the party again, she took a spoon to bed. Crucially, the girl took the spoon not because she currently needed it, but because she would need it in the future. Tulving used this example to illustrate the putatively unique human ability to think about the past and plan for the future (2–4) and proposed that an analogous Bspoon[ test could be used to test forfuture planning in nonhuman animals. Future planning is cognitively demanding because it imposes a long delay between performing an action and getting rewarded for it: a skill that humans use when preparing a suitcase before a trip or by making a cake to celebrate someone_s birthday. Although various animals can plan and execute multiple actions toward a goal (5, 6), they may achieve this withouttaking into account future needs, just current ones (3, 4, 7). Thus, when chimpanzees transport stones to use them to crack open nuts, or New Caledonian crows make hook-shaped tools to fish for insects, they do so in an attempt to satisfy their current hunger state, not some future one.

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Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. *To...