Master Chef - Chimpanzee Edition
Experiments with chimps suggest they have all the cognitive and conceptual tools for cooking - they just don't have fire.
Chimpanzees understand how cooking transforms food
Humans are the only species that cooks food, but, apparently, we're not the only species that would cook if microwave ovens occurred in nature.
Dr. Felix Warneken, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and his colleague Dr. Alexandra Rosati, have found that if you give chimpanzees the ability to cook their food, they much prefer it and will make the effort to do so. In their experiments, they found chimps will delay gratification by saving food to cook, and seem to grasp how the food is transformed by cooking.
This suggests that our early ancestors were cognitively equipped for cooking, and that the only missing ingredient for chimps and our common ancestors was mastering fire.
Related Links
- Paper in Royal Society Proceedings B
- Harvard release
- National Geographic article
- CBC News story