The Mentality of Apes

work by Köhler

Also known as: “Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen”

Written by

The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last updated

June 30, 2026

Quick Summary

Wolfgang Köhler's The Mentality of Apes (1917) is a seminal work in Gestalt psychology that explored problem-solving in chimpanzees. Köhler's experiments, conducted at Tenerife, revealed that apes could devise and use simple tools and build structures to overcome challenges.1

One notable experiment involved a chimpanzee named Sultan, who was given two sticks too short to reach a banana outside his cage. Sultan eventually joined the sticks to create a longer tool, demonstrating what Köhler termed "insight" learning—an immediate understanding of relationships to solve a new problem without overt trial and error. This work significantly revised learning theory by highlighting the cognitive abilities of nonhuman primates.213

Summary created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

4 Britannica Sources

Ask Britannica AI about this topic

Britannica doesn't have a full article on this topic, so we've curated a list of our relevant coverage.

Wolfgang Köhler
…classic Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen (1917; The Mentality of Apes), a work that emphasized insight and led to a radical revision of learning theory. Another major work, Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand (1920; “Physical Gestalt in Rest and Stationary States”), was based on an attempt to determine…
Read More
…classic Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen (1917; The Mentality of Apes), a work that emphasized insight and led to a radical revision of learning theory. Another major work, Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand (1920; “Physical Gestalt in Rest and Stationary States”), was based on an attempt to determine…
Read More