Reaching into Thought: The Minds of the Great Apes

In this book, field and laboratory researchers show that the Great Apes are capable of thinking at symbolic levels, traditionally considered uniquely human. They show these high-level abilities in both social and ecological domains, including tool use, imitation, pretense, self-awareness, deception, consolation, teaching and proto-culture itself. Here, contributors emphasize the mechanisms involved in building these abilities--especially the lengthy developmental and "enculturation" processes--suggesting changes to current views on how primate and human intelligence have evolved. Researchers and professionals in the fields of primatology, animal behavior, anthropology, linguistics, and cognitive psychology will find much useful information in this book.