Monkey In The Middle of a Test

I have always loved "animals are smarter than people" stories. I love them only because, as a human, I can read the story while the allegedly smarty-pants creature cannot. Don't you just love the irony? In fact, I could roll up the newspaper that contained such an article and kill a fly with it...or hit a pooch on his snout...or line the bottom of a bird cage. The possibilities are endless.

This time it's the lesser primates who are out-smarting the homo sapiens.

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees-- young chimpanzees at the age of 5-- have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Could it be that our chimp friends just have less on their minds than their human counterparts?

Let's consider what a human might be thinking while trying to perform a memory test.

1. Why did my check engine light go on? There's another $600 repair.

2. When my boss said, "Nice work" was he being sarcastic? Am I going to get fired?

3. Should I vote for a candidate who is concerned about global warming or is the war on terror the only important issue?

Now let's consider what a chimpanzee might be thinking while trying to perform a memory test.

1. Hey, what happened to my banana?

2. Should I sniff that chimp's ass...again?

3. I wonder how far I could throw my feces?

Matsuzawa has his own theory.

He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.

The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The memory for images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found in children, but which dissipates with age. In fact, the young chimps performed better than older chimps in the new study. (Ayumu's mom did even worse than the college students).

So the next logical step, Lonsdorf said, is to fix up Ayumu with some real competition on these tests: little kids.

Ah, now we have a fair fight.

Let's consider what a little kid might be thinking while trying to perform a memory test.

1. Hey, what happened to my banana?

2. Should I sniff that kid's ass...again?

3. I wonder how far I could throw my feces?