Apes use and understand symbols but they are not unique in this respect: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella; pictured) can apicturedssign values to tokens that represent different items of food.
Elsa Addessi of the CNR, Italy's national research council, and her colleagues trained five monkeys to associate a particular token — such as a green chip, black plastic tube or a brass hook — with one of three specific types of food. They then gave the monkeys a series of choices, each time between different amounts of two food items or between two types of token.
The value the monkeys assigned to a token was very similar to the value they gave to the food it represented, which suggests that the animals weighed up both real and symbolic options in an equivalent manner.
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Animal behaviour: Token symbolism. Nature 453, 960 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/453960d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/453960d
