The Cognitive Tests in Which Humans Lose to Chimpanzees

[Judi Lynn]

By Ross Pomeroy
March 04, 2023

Though humans share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we regularly shrug off the biological similarity with a haughty air of superiority, confident that our cognitive abilities — endowed by a brain three times larger, with 14 billion more neurons — firmly trounce theirs.

We shouldn’t be so sure.

True, chimpanzees have yet to master flight, manufacture semiconductors, or cure a disease, but there are a number of basic cognitive tasks where, in a battle between human and ape, they come out on top.

Are you smarter than a chimp?
For example, in a 2014 study, scientists at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute pitted pairs of humans and pairs of chimpanzees against each other in a competitive game. A chimp would sit down with another chimp and play a basic strategy game, essentially a variation of “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” in which each player would have to learn from the other’s past moves to predict what their competitor would do next. Ultimately, an ideal game develops an optimal pattern predicted by game theory, in which each player makes the most strategic choice possible. The researchers found that chimpanzees would reach this “equilibrium” well before humans. Considering that chimpanzee society tends to be competitive while human society is often more collaborative, it makes sense that chimps would have an edge in rudimentary competitive strategizing.

Another test in which chimpanzees top humans — in this case, four- and eight-year-olds — is called the inaccessible peanut task. Here, kids and chimps simply face the conundrum of a peanut or treat placed at the bottom of a vertical transparent tube that’s locked in place. The treat can’t be shaken or dumped out, and it’s inaccessible by reaching in with a finger. When tested at the Yerkes Primate Center in Georgia, chimpanzees quickly learned to fill their mouth with water from the nearby drinking fountain and spit it into the tube, raising the peanut to the surface. Only half of the eight-year-olds and less than one tenth of the 4-year-olds figured out this solution.

More:
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2023/03/04/the_cognitive_tests_in_which_humans_lose_to_chimpanzees_885292.html

[hlthe2b]

1. Count me among the unsurprised. We underestimate the innate intelligence of all manner of species.

Not to mention the effect of daily SURVIVAL challenges on "competitive" intelligence.

[Turbineguy]

2. So there's a test

that determines at an early age who will become a republican. Interesting.