A bonobo holds an imaginary tea party, chimpanzees are technically drinking, a 52-year-old elephant breaks out for breakfast, and cockroaches turn out to be surprisingly romantic. The animal kingdom, as ever, defies expectations.
The bonobo who understood imaginary juice
In February, a study published in the journal Science revealed that a bonobo named Kanzi had successfully participated in a series of pretend tea party experiments — tracking imaginary juice and grapes as if they were real objects, while still choosing actual juice when both were on offer. The experiments, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, are the first controlled demonstration of imagination in a non-human animal. Kanzi, who died in March 2025 at the age of 44, had spent his life at the Ape Initiative in Iowa and could communicate via over 300 lexigram symbols. The findings suggest that the capacity for pretend play may date back six to nine million years — to the common ancestor of humans and great apes. Science: a field in which one must occasionally pretend to pour juice for a bonobo.
The chimps were, technically, drinking
A UC Berkeley PhD student spent eleven days in a Ugandan rainforest collecting chimpanzee urine — catching it off leaves, or, more memorably, holding a plastic bag on a forked branch beneath chimps who were about to urinate from the treetops. The results, published in Biology Letters and reported by NPR, were worth it: chimpanzees eating fermented African star apple fruit were consuming the equivalent of one to two alcoholic drinks’ worth of ethanol daily. They are not getting drunk — the fruit intake is spread across a full day — but researchers say this may explain why humans have such a deep-seated affinity for alcohol. Our ancestral diet, it turns out, had alcohol baked into it. The chimps, for their part, may be using the fermented fruit to summon the courage for territorial patrols. Make of that what you will.
Alice the elephant, aged 52, had breakfast outside
On the morning of 29 March, Alice — a 52-year-old Asian elephant at Albuquerque’s ABQ BioPark — broke through a welded steel section of her enclosure at around 7:20 a.m. and took herself on a tour of the zoo’s campus. The zoo was not yet open to the public. Alice spent her unsupervised time eating trees and plants, which seems entirely reasonable. Staff secured the perimeter, recalled Alice to her habitat, and delayed the zoo’s opening by thirty minutes to clear the debris she had left behind. No injuries were reported. The zoo said all emergency protocols worked perfectly. Alice said nothing.
Cockroaches: now also romantic
A study published in March in Royal Society Open Science found evidence that Salganea taiwanensis — a wood-feeding cockroach native to Taiwan — may engage in pair bonding, as reported by NPR. The researchers observed behaviour consistent with long-term monogamous partnerships, which is unusual in insects. This is, objectively, not something most people expected to read about cockroaches in 2026. The study notes the species is notable for its cooperative behaviour generally; the pair-bonding finding adds another dimension to what is turning out to be a surprisingly wholesome insect.
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