9/7/2023 0 Comments Chimpanzee iq test![]() ![]() As the American primatologist Marc Hauser, inventor of the term humaniqueness, once said: “My guess is that we will eventually come to see that the gap between human and animal cognition, even a chimpanzee, is greater than the gap between a chimp and a beetle.” Other species are conveniently swept together as “animals” or “the animal”-not to mention “the brute” or “the nonhuman”-as if there were no point differentiating among them. As expressed by David Premack, “Humans command all cognitive abilities, and all of them are domain general, whereas animals, by contrast, command very few abilities, and all of them are adaptations restricted to a single goal or activity.” Humans, in other words, are a singular bright light in the dark intellectual firmament that is the rest of nature. ![]() But this ape has already violated the dictum that, without exception, tests of intelligence ought to confirm human superiority. Since Ayumu is now training on a much larger set of numbers, and his photographic memory is being tried on ever shorter time intervals, the limits of what he can do are as yet unknown. With regard to Ayumu, however, it was the turn of psychology departments to be upset. Related Segment How Do You Measure the I.Q. The good thing about DNA is that it is immune to prejudice, making it a more objective measure. Bipedalism is really not as special as it has been made out to be. At some savanna sites, bonobos walk entire distances upright through tall grass, making confident strides like humans. We make a big deal of our bipedal locomotion, for example, while ignoring the many animals, from chickens to hopping kangaroos, that move the same way. To determine what is important in a skeleton takes judgment, though, which allows the subjective coloring of traits that we deem crucial. The DNA comparison caused hand-wringing in anthropology departments, where until then skulls and bones had ruled supremely as the gauge of relatedness. It is only for historical reasons that taxonomists have let us keep the Homo genus all to ourselves. The distress Ayumu’s photographic memory caused in the scientific community was of the same order as when, half a century ago, DNA studies revealed that humans barely differ enough from bonobos and chimpanzees to deserve their own genus. Taking on a British memory champion known for his ability to memorize an entire stack of cards, Ayumu emerged the “chimpion.” One follow-up study managed to train humans up to Ayumu’s level with five numbers, but the ape remembers up to nine with 80 percent accuracy, something no human has managed so far. This is one-fifth of a second, literally the bat of an eye. Trying the task myself, I was unable to keep track of more than five numbers after staring at the screen for many seconds, while Ayumu can do the same after seeing the numbers for just 210 milliseconds. Reducing the amount of time the numbers flash on the screen doesn’t seem to matter to Ayumu, even though humans become less accurate the shorter the time interval. Having memorized the numbers, Ayumu touches the squares in the correct order. Trained on a touchscreen, he can recall a series of numbers from 1 through 9 and tap them in the right order, even though the numbers appear randomly on the screen and are replaced by white squares as soon as he starts tapping. ![]() I watched his incredibly rapid decision making the way I admire my students typing ten times faster than me.Īyumu, is a young male who, in 2007, put human memory to shame. Since the cubicles are transparent and low, I could lean on one to look over Ayumu’s shoulder. This way playing computer games is entirely up to them, which guarantees sound motivation. The chimp can also leave the cubicle whenever he wants. At any moment, an ape can run into one of several cubicles-like little phone booths-equipped with a computer. He lives with other chimps in an outdoor area at the Primate Research Institute (PRI) of Kyoto University. The following is an excerpt from Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal.Īyumu had no time for me while he was working on his computer. ![]()
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