Comparing chimpanzees' preparatory responses to known and unknown future outcomes
When humans plan for the future, we recognize not only that one particular event may occur, but that the future can have different, mutually exclusive possible outcomes. A recent study by Suddendorf et al. (Suddendorf 2017 Biol. Lett. 13, 20170170 (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2017.0170)) suggests that young children (less than 3 years) and apes lack this capacity, as demonstrated by their failure to cover ea