Apes, like people, do what’s called anticipatory looking: They look to locations where they anticipate something is about to happen. This tendency allowed us to assess what the apes expected the actor to do when he returned to search for the stone.
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Strikingly, across several different conditions and contexts, when the actor was reaching toward the two boxes, apes consistently looked to the location where the actor falsely believed the stone to be. Importantly, their gaze predicted the actor’s search even before the actor provided any directional cues about where he was going to search for the stone.
The apes were able to anticipate that the actor would behave in accordance with what we humans recognize as a false belief.
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