Get a chimp to take your exams

In the novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, humans are portrayed as the third most intelligent beings on planet Earth, after dolphins and mice. While this may seem like a ridiculous idea, it is now apparent that humans are not quite as superior as was assumed. Recent studies conducted by Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University suggest that the intelligence of chimpanzees may be higher than previously imagined. In the study, the institute taught a group of three 5-year-old chimpanzees and their mothers the numbers one through nine. They then competed against adult humans in two, short-term memory tests. The fascinating part is, the chimpanzees won commandingly both times.

In the first test, the chimps and 12 human volunteers were shown the numbers one through nine on a touch sensitive computer screen. They had to memorize the numbers' locations and then place them in ascending order. Once a numeral was touched, the remaining ones were covered with white squares. The test resulted with the chimps managing to arrange the digits much quicker.

The second test pitted a chimp named Ayumu against nine university students. The goal of the test was the same as before, but this time, the numbers were not left on the screen to be observed. The numerals were flashed on the screen for a time range between 0.21 and 0.65 seconds. The result of this test showed that when the time durations decreased, Ayumu maintained an 80 percent success rate, while the students' success rates dropped to 40 percent.

After six months of training with these tests, three human university students still could not match three chimps, probably due to the fact that 0.21 seconds is not long enough for human eyes to move quick enough to explore the screen.

This gift for instant memory is likened to "eidetic memory," or more commonly known as photographic memory. Aging affects this skill in both humans and chimps.

Matsuzawa hypothesizes that in prehistoric times, a part of the human brain once catered to photographic memory. Today, this part houses the ability to communicate through language. Simply stated, we traded away the aptitude for total recall in exchange for complex language form.

These findings, published in Current Biology, contradict the generally accepted idea that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," says Matsuzawa.

When questioned about the radical nature of this idea, Matsuzawa replied that this did not challenge the status quo between humans and chimps. He simply said, "The human-animal dichotomy is wrong. Humans are members of the animal kingdom."

While a chimp can demonstrate speedy retention of numbers on a computer, I don't think we'll see him building one anytime soon.