I linked to this video of a primate being surprised by magic tricks on my Twitter (I had referred to him as a “monkey”, but perhaps he’s a chimpanzee). Several people were astonished by the Pan-kun’s intelligence. If you were one of those people you will probably want to see Pan-kun attempting dog-training (part 1, part 2).

In the magician video, Pan-kun is demonstrating an understanding of object permanence. Having a theory of object permanence means being able to model the existence of objects in your mind, even though there is no direct sensitorial evidence for that object. For example, Pan-kun expressed surprised when the magician filled up an opaque glass with milk, and then tilted the glass over, but no milk came out, showing that Pan-kun’s model of the world was such that there should have been milk in the glass (even though he couldn’t directly see, hear, smell, touch, etc. the milk). In the dog-training video, you also see some problem solving (e.g. the scene where the dog escapes from its leash). You occasionally see Pan-kun seemingly nodding in response to questions, but I strongly suspect this latter part is “faked”. After watching several of his videos, what seems to happen is that the human asking the question nods at the end of the question, and Pan-kun nods in response to the nodding. There’s no evidence he actually does understand the questions being asked of him.