Spontaneous categorization of natural objects in chimpanzees

Abstract

Categorization is the ability to distinguish among individual objects and events in the world and recognize some of them as equivalent on one basis.Objects and events in the world are physically different from one another, and they are distributed continuously around us. Categorizing objects and events and organizing the world is one of the most important abilities of animals. Humans and nonhuman animals spontaneously construct a variety of categories from birth. Categorization does not have only one basis. It is often based on perceptual similarity, but sometimes on thematic relationships, in which the individual is aware of the objects together. In this chapter, I compare the ability of categorization between humans and chimpanzees,which are the closest relative to humans, and discuss the specialization of the categorization ability in humans.