this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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[–] Zier@fedia.io 3 points 5 hours ago

Humans are Apes. All the Great Apes share many traits.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 21 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I can't imagine that other animals don't have imagination. I mean, many of them have dreams. Are dreams not imagination running on autopilot?

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 hour ago

Read the article, the headline isn't great. This is about playing pretend with imagined objects.

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 9 points 7 hours ago

When my dog brings me a ball, drops it in front of me, pushes it towards me with his nose, and stares at it, I'm pretty sure he imagining me throwing it.

When I pick the ball up and he gets in a "ready to chase" posture, or alternatively runs to the other side of the room in preparation for catching it, I know he's imagining me throwing it.

[–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Yea, you can not really predict the future, if you can not imagine. And without it being able to predict the future, a dog would never be able to be trained.

So, any animal that you can teach something through potential treat must be able to imagine, I would assume.

[–] tocano@piefed.social 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine all the people
Living for today....

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine all the bonobos
It isn't hard to do
Biweekly public orgies
Occasional flinging of poo

[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Damn. You spoiled John Lennon for me

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 1 points 3 hours ago

No, that was Mark David Chapman.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world -5 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

But they don't ask questions. You can teach them sign language to a degree and they WILL use it to communicate, but so far none of them has ever posed a question to their researchers.

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago

New research says birds have grammar and you’re still talking like it’s the 20th century. Get on with the times! Many animals are practically identical to us in capability. We’re just better at some of the stuff we all can do.

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 1 points 9 hours ago

Absolutely false. Not even remotely true.

[–] andybytes@programming.dev 0 points 9 hours ago

I like skeptics. What is a false positive of a percieved threat but imagination. A halusination to help the animial fill in the gaps to counter a threat. Trauma is also imagination when you go into panic mode aka fight or flight. Humans are animals there is no proof there is a god and we are destroying the planet. I think we need to stop hyping up animals and start down grading humans aka also animals. It is like if you take yourself too seriously you might kill yourself. I think humanity takes themselves too seriously thats why they are killing themselves. Your dreamz....your goalz.... your ambition.... Goose stepping themselves into oblivion. I just want to take it all down a peg and show that relative there hasn't been much human progress. Like i am not impressed. whoopty frickin doo... so we are killing beautiful creatures for lumber to make paper so we can wipe our arse.