Like people, animals engage in a wide variety of play activities, but what about imaginary play? One of the hallmarks of human play, especially in childhood, is the creative use of imagination to invent things, characters, and situations, and to attribute to them qualities and conditions that don’t exist. A child might assert that a dragon lives in her closet, that a stuffed bear talks, or that tea fills an empty cup. For a long time, this kind of imaginary play was considered uniquely human, but now it looks like the great apes share the ability to engage in make-believe.
Watch this video to see chimps playing with “rock dolls.” I write about other imaginative behavior in apes in my book, Inside Animal Hearts and Minds.