ABSTRACT
The idea that humans have evolved an ability to interpret and predict behaviour on the basis of mental status has a relatively recent history (Jolly, 1966; Premack & Woodruff, 1978; Humphrey, 1984; Byrne & Whiten, 1988; Cheney & Seyfarth, 1990). These authors have all argued in different ways that an ability to read behaviour in terms of mental states would confer selective advantages for survival and reproduction to those organisms who possessed this ability, in making them better able to make sense of another organism's action, and predict what it might do next.
