The latest Darwinian attempt is an experiment in which chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans watch a video clip featuring a human being dressed as King Kong steals a rock from another human being and hides it in a box. Then King Kong drives the man away and puts the rock in another box. Then he changes his mind and takes the rock away.
The researchers used an infrared eye-tracker to see where the apes would look. Most of them fixed their eyes on the boxes and many looked at the one where the man assumed the rock was – although it wasn’t.
The Darwinian explanation for this is that apes have a theory of mind.
We could obviously do the experiment with dogs and get a similar result, as in many ways they are cleverer than chimps or other apes. But in the Darwinian world, dogs aren’t our close relatives, so such a result wouldn’t make headlines.
“What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.” (Psalm 8: 4–6, ESV).
Source:
Morell, Virginia. 2016. Humans aren’t the only great apes that can ‘read minds’Science (6 October).