Humans: The One and Only?

Scientists have been researching the cognitive abilities of chimpanzees at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto since 1967. A study involving human beings and chimpanzees was published in Current Biology in 2007. Two scientists; Inoue and Matsuzawa taught three mother-offspring pairs to recognize and order Arabic numerals from one to nine. The scientists then showed the chimpanzees and students of the University of Kyoto the nine numerals, which appeared in different on-screen positions on a touch-screen monitor. After the subject touched the first numeral, the other numerals were replaced by white squares. The subjects were then required to touch the squares in the right order. The results showed that the three young chimpanzees were faster in their response time than their mothers or the students.

A young chimpanzee named Ayumu outperformed all the subjects in speed and accuracy. Given Ayumu’s excellent performance, the scientists took it for a second test where five numerals appeared on a white square and disappeared after a specific limited duration. If the numerals showed up for seven-tenths seconds, Ayumu and the students had a success rate of 80 percent. If the time shortened, the students’ success rate declined up to 50 percent while Ayumus success rate remained almost at the same level. The shortest duration of appearance was 210 milliseconds. This is close to the frequency of occurrence of human saccadic eye movement (Bartz 1962), which means, that there is not enough time for human subjects to explore the screen by eye movement.

In 2008 the test was repeated with Ayumu and world memory champion Ben Pridmore. When the numerals were shown fora fifth of a second, Ayumu scored 90 percent correct, while Pridmore got 33 percent right (Gutierrez 2008).

These outcomes seem to indicate that at least young chimpanzees have eidetic imagery. Eidetic imagery is the memory capacity to retain an accurate, detailed image of a complex scene or pattern (Jaensch 1930).

In essence, these studies show that young chimpanzees have a working memory capability for numerical recollection which tends to better than that of human adults.

It is not appropriate to measure intelligence using human standards only. If a non-human animal can perform an activity that only humans can do, we consider this as intelligent behavior. If a non-human animal shows abilities humans do not have, humans tend to say it is instinct or given by physical attributes. It is a decidedly anthropogenic driven view on what intelligence is. At the moment, Circus Belly is in Hannover (Germany). Currently, this is an on-going debate in Germany, and it is a big one because it is the last circus that involves a chimpanzee. Demonstrations take place regularly. Last weekend the son of the circus director came out and tried to explain how vital the chimpanzee is for the circus and its survival. He argued that humans are the most intelligent species on earth. Choices are rights that only humans have. The more intelligent beings always tend to take advantage of the less intelligent ones. That is how the world functions.

Question is; if this is the world we want to live in?

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References

Bartz, A. E. (1962). Eye-movement latency, duration, and response time as a function of angular displacement. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 64 (3). 318-324.

Gutierrez, D. (2008). Chimpanzee Beats Human Memory Genius in Memorization Competition. 03 Aug. Available at: https://www.naturalnews.com/023770_memory_human_chimpanzees.html [accessed 26 October 2018].

Inoue, S. and Matsuzawa, T. (2007). Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees. Current Biology.17 (23). R1004-R1005.

Jaensch, E. R. (1930). Eidetic Imagery and Typological Methods of Investigation. Abingdon. Oxon. England. Routledge.