Monkeys may not have the sense to live in the human world (or maybe they're smarter for keeping to themselves), but a new study out of Japan found chimpanzee's to have better cognitive functioning than college students.Three 5-year-old chimps took on college students in a series of memory tests involving numbers on a touch screen.
In the first test, nine numbers appeared on the screen. When they touched the first number,
the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there. While the chimps were no more accurate than the college kids, they could do the task faster.In the second test, the best performing chimp was pitted against nine students, but this time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The chimp and students both scored 80 percent when the numbers were shown for 7/10s of a second, but when shown for 2/10s of a second, the chimps still scored about 80 percent, while humans scored a lowly 40 percent.
Maybe those college students were just hungover? I think they should get those chimps liquored up and then see how they do.
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2 comments:
Hi, I think animals are sometimes better than humans even in mental tasks. We know already they are often better in physical tasks.
Anyway, I made a site where you can do the chimpanzee test yourself:
http://chimp-test.bigparadox.com/
Regards,
Magnus
thanks for the post, Magnus.
I checked out that site, and dear God am I glad no one was in the room watching me while I did that test. And watching the video of the chimp fly through that just throws some salt in the wound.
But I have a degree and he doesn't (and I'm going to keep telling myself that that's all that matters).
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