Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley found that chimpanzees are capable not only of forming expectations based on evidence but also of changing their beliefs when presented with new information. The experiments were conducted in the Ngamba Island sanctuary in Uganda.
The animals were asked to choose which of two boxes contained food, relying on different cues: visibility of the food, sounds from inside the box, and smells around.
The results showed that chimpanzees evaluated the quality and reliability of the information, rather than simply reacting to the last cue. When new significant data emerged, they revised their decisions, demonstrating cognitive flexibility comparable to the reasoning level of four-year-old children.
Chimpanzees chose rational options two to three times more often than erroneous ones and successfully handled more complex tasks, including verifying the accuracy of initial data. These observations confirm that chimpanzees possess advanced metacognitive abilities—specifically, the ability to analyze their own thinking.
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