Consider the following examples of pretense:
Michael runs around his room dragging a small plastic wagon behind him, sometimes letting it “catch up,” and then he screams in mock terror.
Chantek talks to his toy animals and offers them food and drink.
Viki walks about the house, “pulling” what seems an imaginary toy on a string. She stops occasionally and tugs at the “string,” as if the “toy” is caught on something. Once, she “dipped” the item into the toilet bowl, raising and lowering the “string.”
Koko lifts an empty toy teacup to her lips and makes loud “slurping” sounds, as if drinking.
Austin pretends to eat imaginary food with gusto, scooping out and swallowing large bites of nothing.
What could be more obvious as examples of pretense? In the first two examples, the pretender playfully attributes animate qualities to a blanket and toys and, in the second three, the pretender treats nothing as a toy, as tea, and as food. If Viki, Chantek, Michael, Koko, and Austen were human toddlers, most observers would not hesitate to call these episodes examples of “pretend play.” But these are not human children, they are great apes: chimpanzees (Hayes, 1951; Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker & Taylor, 1998); an orangutan (Miles, 1990); and lowland gorillas (Patterson & Kennedy, 1987). In this chapter, we present evidence of pretend play by great apes, focusing on one in particular – the sign-language-using gorilla Koko.