Orangutans Can Guess Taste Using Memories Like Humans Do, Study Shows

Decisions, decisions. A new study reveals that apart from humans, orangutans can also make decisions on things by using prior experiences.

The study published in Springer Link was conducted with a 21-year-old male Sumatran orang-utan (Pongo abelii) named Naong and 10 humans (four females aged 20 to 35 years old). The researchers found out that without tasting a new juice mix, an orangutan can somehow conclude if such drink will taste good or not.

This ability is called affective forecasting, where a person can make a decision or a possible prediction based on his or her prior experiences and knowledge.

By using these relevant memories in the past, a person can recombined the details, make mental pictures of it, thus, making him or her invoke a decision or a possible situation in the midst of never-before-experienced situations. This kind of ability is usually found in humans.

Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc of Lund University in Sweden and her team developed a non-verbal test to assess how an animal responds to a new taste.

Science Daily reported that the study, which was conducted in Furuvik Zoo in Sweden, let participants mentally create new juice blends from the ingredients they are already familiar with, and to forecast if the end products will taste good or not. There were four common ingredients that were combined (cherry, lemon, rhubarb and vinegar) into six drink mixes they had never before tasted.

The results of the study were astounding. It turns out that both human subjects and the orangutan made choices that showed their particular taste preferences for the various ingredients.

It means that humans and orangutans can put together relevant memories to make new liquid blends. Thus, foresee if the end products will be tasty or not.

Animals were previously thought of using also its prior experiences but will remain stuck in those experiences that when confronted with new situations, it will behave randomly by way of trial-and-error.

However, Naong made consistent choices when confronted with never-before experienced situations, and did not respond randomly by way of trial-and-error as expected.

"The orangutan, just like humans, seems to have been able to make hedonic predictions concerning never-before experienced events," says Sauciuc, who adds that this relationship was confirmed when the data obtained in the study were incorporated into statistical models, Science Daily reports.