As the paper documents, Natasha repeatedly demonstrates skills and reasoning that escape modern-day high school students.
"The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional," wrote authors
According to these scientists, Natasha has demonstrated the following skills; all of which escape the dumbed-down mental capacity of a typical U.S. high school student:
• An ability to repeatedly escape the chimpanzee enclosure using planning skills.
• An ability to disable an electric fence by throwing branches on it and observing the sparks. Once the sparks stopped, Natasha knew the fence was disabled and then proceeded to climb it.
• The ability to wield a special tool to avoid a trap while locating hidden food. (U.S. high school students eat toxic food chemicals every day which trap them in a lifetime of chronic disease.)
• According to scientists, "ape intelligence might be a bundling of skills related to learning, tool usage, understanding of quantities, and an ability to reach conclusions based on evidence and reasoning." (http://news.discovery.com/animals/ape-genius-chimpanzee-intelligence-...) U.S. high school students, on the other hand, largely run their lives based on drama, jealousy, sex and emotional reactions to simple stimuli such as corporate logos on basketball shoes.
• Intelligent chimpanzees are well known to manufacture their own tools in order to extract (yummy) termites out of holes in trees. A typical U.S. high school student barely has the skill to open a frozen burrito wrapper and punch "START" on a microwave oven.
On a similar note, it is well known that the U.S. military conducts vaccine medical experiments on human soldiers for the sole reason that "humans are cheaper than monkeys." Lab monkeys actually try to escape from vaccine assaults, while humans actually line up at pharmacies and PAY to be injected with experimental vaccines!
The question isn't whether apes are smarter than humans... it's actually this far more important question: Are many humans dumber than apes?
Geniuses exist among non-humans too
Aug 27, 1:56 pm
Washington, August 27 (ANI): A series of tests examining intelligence in chimps have found that some apes are much smarter than others.
One chimp in particular, an adult female in her 20’s named Natasha, who scored far better than other chimps was classified as being “exceptional.”
The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, Discovery News reported.
Instead, a perfect storm of abilities seems to come together to create the Einsteins of the animal kingdom. Natasha’s keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study.
“The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional,” wrote study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For example, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn’t see a spark, letting her know that the power was off.
She also learned how to tease humans, beckoning them to throw food her way, only to spray the unsuspecting person with water.
Herrmann and Call decided to study this chimp, along with numerous others, to see if there really are chimp prodigies among non-human great apes. To do this, the researchers created a multi-part mental challenge consisting of eight tasks.
For the first task, the chimps had to find hidden find, testing their spatial knowledge. For the second, the chimps wielded a tool -- avoiding a trap -- to again obtain a food reward. The remaining tasks demonstrated understanding of things like colour, size and shape.
“We identified some individuals who consistently scored well across (the) multiple tasks,” wrote the authors, who again made note of Natasha, who aced nearly every task.
The researchers could not identify “a general intelligence factor.” They instead indicate that ape intelligence might be a bundling of skills related to learning, tool usage, understanding of quantities, and an ability to reach conclusions based on evidence and reasoning.
For other animals, Herrmann and Call mention the dogs Rico and Chaser, who knew the meaning of hundreds of words. (ANI)
Certain apes appear to be much smarter than others, with at least one chimpanzee now called "exceptional" when compared to other chimps.
The standout chimp, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, scored off the charts in a battery of tests. The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, but that no one attribute constitutes intelligence.
Instead, a perfect storm of abilities seems to come together to create the Einsteins of the animal kingdom. Natasha's keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study.
"The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional," study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wrote.
"All three of the most experienced caretakers included Natasha in their lists (of the most intelligent chimps)," they added.
Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For instance, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn't see a spark, letting her know that the power was off.
She also learned how to tease humans, beckoning them to throw food her way, only to spray the unsuspecting person with water.
Herrmann and Call decided to study this chimp, along with numerous others, to see if there really are chimp prodigies among non-human great apes. To do this, the researchers created a multi-part mental challenge consisting of eight tasks.
For the first task, the chimps had to find hidden food, testing their spatial knowledge. For the second, the chimps wielded a tool -- avoiding a trap -- to again obtain a food reward. The remaining tasks demonstrated understanding of things like color, size and shape.
"We identified some individuals who consistently scored well across (the) multiple tasks," wrote the authors, who again made note of Natasha, who aced nearly every task.
The researchers could not identify "a general intelligence factor." They instead indicate that ape intelligence might be a bundling of skills related to learning, tool usage, understanding of quantities, and an ability to reach conclusions based on evidence and reasoning.
As the saying goes, necessity may be the mother of invention and, at least in some cases, one reason behind chimp cleverness.
Call, for example, told Discovery News about chimps that make tools for extracting termites out of mounds. The process requires several steps.
"They uproot the stem or use their teeth to clip the stem at the base and then remove the large leaf from the distal end by clipping it with their teeth before transporting the stem to the termite nest, where they complete tool manufacture by modifying the end into a 'paint brush' tip by pulling the stem through their teeth, splitting the probe lengthwise by pulling off strands of fiber, or separating the fibers by biting them," he said.
As for why only some chimps go through such an elaborate process, "a lot depends on the ecological constraints and needs," he said.
In terms of other animals, Herrmann and Call mention the dogs Rico and Chaser, who knew the meaning of hundreds of words.
"Interestingly," the scientists point out, "all of these dogs (considered to be very smart) are border collies. And many of their owners reported that they did not train the dogs to play the fetching game; it was the dogs who trained them!"
The jury is still out on what exactly constitutes such cleverness. The researchers propose that more studies be conducted, with "tasks that capture cognitive, motivational and temperament dimensions."
That's because, in part, a willingness to learn and a positive attitude seem to make as big of a difference in dogs, chimps and other animals as they do in humans.
Exceptionally Smart Chimps Are Like Humans
Aug 27, 2012 07:43 AM EDT
- Tags
- social intelligence, chimpanzees
(Photo : Reuters) Some chimpanzees are exceptionally smart than others.
A new study finds that some chimpanzees are exceptionally smarter than the other ones just like humans.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany studied chimpanzees including 20-year-old female chimp Natasha from the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda to find out if social intelligence existed among apes, a quality that is believe to set humans apart from other primates, reported
Discovery News.
Natasha has been touted as a chimp genius for her exceptional levels of intelligence. Earlier studies have showed that the female prodigy has learnt to communicate with other members of its species and to deal with various other situations.
They gave eight tasks to Natasha and other chimpanzees such as identifying color, size and shape, finding a hidden food, and using a tool to avoid traps and find food. They found several chimpanzees to perform well in all the tasks assigned to them suggesting that social intelligence can also be found among apes other humans.
In particular, Natasha performed exceptionally well in all the tasks.
"The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional," study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wrote, reported
Discovery News. "All three of the most experienced caretakers included Natasha in their lists (of the most intelligent chimps)."
The chimp is already very popular for its antics that have never been seen before. She has tried to escape from her enclosure numerous times that is covered with an electric fence by tossing the tree branches against the fence. She attempted to escape when there was no spark coming from the fence understanding that that power had been switched off and it was safe to escape. Natasha has also learnt to clap hands in order call the caretakers and demand more food. Her antics have also involved her signaling to the visitors and splashing water on them.
Natasha's display of intelligence levels equaling the humans has awed the scientists. While the experts identified high intelligence levels among the apes, they could not find one particular factor that attributed to the quality.
Instead, they pointed out several factors such as learning and understanding using evidence and reasoning abilities and tool for the apes' intelligence.
The findings are published in the latest journal of
Philosophical Transactionsof the Royal Society B.
Read more at
http://www.naturenplanet.com/articles/2937/20120827/exceptionally-smart-chimps-are-like-humans-chimpanzee-intelligence-task-learning-understanding.htm#vACeUz2OkeJFvezq.99
LINK:
(NaturalNews) A twenties-something "genius ape" named
Natasha has been found to demonstrate more intelligence than a typical U.S. high school student. The findings have been published in the peer-reviewed science journal
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
As the paper documents, Natasha repeatedly demonstrates skills and reasoning that escape modern-day high school students. "The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional," wrote authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (reported at Discovery.com, link below).
According to these scientists, Natasha has demonstrated the following skills; all of which escape the dumbed-down mental capacity of a typical U.S. high school student:
• An ability to repeatedly escape the chimpanzee enclosure using planning skills.
• An ability to disable an electric fence by throwing branches on it and observing the sparks. Once the sparks stopped, Natasha knew the fence was disabled and then proceeded to climb it. (A typical U.S. high school student cannot figure out how to pull his pants up around his waist.)
• The ability to wield a special tool to avoid a trap while locating hidden food. (U.S. high school students eat toxic food chemicals every day which trap them in a lifetime of chronic disease.)
• According to scientists, "ape intelligence might be a bundling of skills related to learning, tool usage, understanding of quantities, and an ability to reach conclusions based on evidence and reasoning." (
http://news.discovery.com/animals/ape-genius-chimpanzee-intelligence-...) U.S. high school students, on the other hand, largely run their lives based on drama, jealousy, sex and emotional reactions to simple stimuli such as corporate logos on basketball shoes.
• Intelligent chimpanzees are well known to manufacture their own tools in order to extract (yummy) termites out of holes in trees. A typical U.S. high school student barely has the skill to open a frozen burrito wrapper and punch "START" on a microwave oven.
On a similar note, it is well known that the U.S. military conducts vaccine medical experiments on human soldiers for the sole reason that "humans are cheaper than monkeys." Lab monkeys actually try to escape from vaccine assaults, while humans actually line up at pharmacies and PAY to be injected with experimental vaccines!
The question isn't whether apes are smarter than humans... it's actually this far more important question: Are many humans dumber than apes?
Chimpanzees are more AWARE than the average human, too
According to the latest science, chimpanzees are
conscious, aware beings with just as much awareness as humans (
http://news.discovery.com/animals/chimpanzees-self-awareness-110504.h...). Humans, on the other hand, go to great lengths to diminish their awareness with alcohol, drugs and mind-altering psychiatric drugs.
Chimpanzees are acutely aware of their environments, while a typical high-school-aged human seems to exist in a sleepwalking zombie state from which only violent video games or online porn can cause them to awaken. While a typical chimpanzee works to
observe reality while attempting to make sense of the world, a typical high school teen tries to
escape reality and reject the real world.
Interestingly, organizations contributing to the problem of dumbed-down, zombified humans include Discovery.com where the story of Natasha the genius ape was originally reported. To the right of the story is an advertisement for -- get this -- a mind-altering psychiatric drug known as
ABILIFY. The text
right there on the page next to the story about how smart the "genius ape" is reads:
Antidepressants can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens and young adults. (See screen shot below.)
Apparently,
Discovery News did not think this fact is a sufficient reason to ban such ads from its website. As long as there's money to be made promoting these toxic chemicals, who cares if a few children commit suicide or blow away their classmates in a mass shooting?
That's how stupid humans are, by the way: They promote things that harm other humans as long as they make a profit in the process. Chimpanzees don't seek out mind-altering psychiatric drugs. Only a human is stupid enough to assault their brain chemistry with a patented, synthetic chemical made in a factory.
You can't brainwash an ape into thinking childhood is a disease. (
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPS9SohzMjw)
The real hilarity in this story, however, is the subhead text in the Discovery.com article which reads, "Zoo Chimp Makes Elaborate Plots to Attack Humans" while adjacent to this column, the site runs an ad for a mind-altering drug that accomplishes the same thing!
Here's the image from the Discovery News website, which makes Discovery.com look like an ignorant cabal of drug-pimping apes:
The Structure of Individual Differences in the Cognitive Abilities of Children and Chimpanzees
- Esther Herrmann1,
- Maria Victoria Hernández-Lloreda2,
- Josep Call1,
- Brian Hare3 and
- Michael Tomasello1
-
1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
-
2Departamento de Metodología de las Ciencias del Comportamiento, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
-
3Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University
- Esther Herrmann, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany E-mail: eherrman@eva.mpg.de
Abstract
Most studies of animal cognition focus on group performance and neglect individual differences and the correlational structure of cognitive abilities. Moreover, no previous studies have compared the correlational structure of cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals and humans. We compared the structure of individual differences of 106 chimpanzees and 105 two-year-old human children using 15 cognitive tasks that posed problems about the physical or social world. We found a similar factor of spatial cognition for the two species. But whereas the chimpanzees had only a single factor in addition to spatial cognition, the children had two distinct additional factors: one for physical cognition and one for social cognition. These findings, in combination with previous research, support the proposal that humans share many cognitive skills with nonhuman apes, especially for dealing with the physical world, but in addition have evolved some specialized skills of social cognition.
Articles citing this article
-
Published online before print December 18, 2009, doi: 10.1177/0956797609356511 Psychological Science January 2010 vol. 21 no. 1 102-110
"Natasha Einstein" the Chimpanzee Valedictorian
A new look at chimpanzee multiple intelligences reveals genius
We all know that chimpanzees and other animals are extremely intelligent and deeply emotional. And now a recent and extremely detailed study shows just how smart chimpanzees can be and that there are measurable individual differences in
intelligence. Esther Herrmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and her colleague Josep Call have discovered that a female chimpanzee named Natasha
was the smartest of the 106 chimpanzees they tested. The abstract for their original research article can be found
here.
During their study the researchers "noticed a wide range of skills among the chimps and wondered whether they could measure this variation in ability—and whether there were studies that could predict the chimps’ overall performance in all areas, like an IQ test in humans. So they gave a battery of physical and social tests to 106 chimps at Ngamba Island and the Tchimpounga chimpanzee sanctuary in the Republic of the Congo, and to 23 captive chimpanzees and bonobos in Germany. In one experiment, chimps were asked to find food in a container after it had been shuffled around with empty containers. In another, they had to use a stick to get food placed on a high platform. The researchers analyzed the data to determine if the scores in some tests helped predict performance in others."
Individual differences and multiple intelligences are important to study
While the reseaerchers didn't discover a general intelligence factor, g, that predicted intelligence on different sorts of skills they did discover large individual differences and that Natasha was the class valedictorian. Thus, they "advocate an approach based on testing multiple individuals (of multiple species) on multiple tasks that capture
cognitive, motivational and temperament factors affecting performance. One of the advantages of this approach is that it may contribute to reconcile the general and domain-specific views on primate intelligence."
This study is a landmark attempt to open the doors to learning more about animal intelligence focusing on individual differences. It is also reminiscent of Howard Gardner's research on
multiple intelligences in human apes and lays the foundation for work on animal genius and within species variations in intelligence. There is a great need for research on wild animals living in their natural habitats where they are not constrained by varying conditions of captivity.
Being a birdbrain is just fine
It is also important to include other animals in these sorts of analyses because we know there are significant individual differences among members of many different species and even among members of the same litter or brood. We also know that some birds can do things that chimpanzees can't do. For example,
New Caledonian Crows (see
also) make and use more sophisticated tools than do chimpanzees and it would be fascinating to learn more about multiple intelligences and the existence of valedictorians in these Einsteinian birds and other animals. Calling someone a "birdbrain" can be quite the compliment.
It's an exciting time for those people who are interested in the cognitive and emotional capacities of nonhuman animals. Stay tuned for more on the fascinating world of the amazing beings with whom we share our planet and how they differ from one another. For example, I'll be writing about "street smart" dogs later on because there clearly are individual dogs (and other animals) who do better "on the streets" than do others. The same goes for "urban smart" wild animals among whom some individuals do just fine, whereas others do not.
Link:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201208/natasha-einstein-the-chimpanzee-valedictorian
Zany Science
Animal geniuses also exist
ANI
Washington, August 28, 2012
A series of tests examining intelligence in chimps have found that some apes are much smarter than others. One chimp in particular, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, who scored far better than other chimps was classified as being “exceptional.” The findings, published in
the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, Discovery News reported. Natasha’s keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study.
“The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional,” wrote study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For example, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn't see a spark, letting her know that the power was off.
This most intelligent of apes still occurs in the wild in the following countries:
Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania.
Some of the East African parks where you can see and get chimp pictures are:
· Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda
· Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda
· Kibale National Park, Uganda
· Murchison Falls Conservation Area, Uganda
· Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda
· Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Lake Victoria, Uganda
· Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania – where there is also a sanctuary
· Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania
· Rubondo Island National Park, Tanzania
· Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, northern Zambia
· Garamba National Park, DRC
· Parc National des Virunga, DRC
· Parc National du Kahuzi-Biega, DRC
· Loango National Park, Gabon (west Africa)
A lot of what we know about chimpanzees today is thanks to people like Jane Goodall dedicating much of their lives to observing and studying these apes.
Chimpanzee Pictures Of Their Lifestyle
For the most part they follow a vegetarian diet, but will also hunt and kill other animals for meat.
Chimps live in societies of up to 80 individuals, broken into smaller “clans”. There are no definitive leaders in chimp groups, but a definite rank order. Adult males almost always dominate females, and the most respected male is the one that can put up the biggest display of strength and create the most noise by hooting and screaming. Chimpanzee photos of this in the wild are few and far between.
Conflict among clan members can usually be ascribed to a subordinate crossing the line by stealing food for example or failing to get out of the way… nothing serious.
Almost Human
Humans and chimpanzees share an amazing 98.6% of the same DNA.
It is interesting that chimpanzee babies develop at a faster rate than humans, at least up to the age of four. Chimps begin to walk and climb at 5 months, humans usually at around 1 year of age.
Female chimps reach sexual maturity at 12 years. When in heat she will often mate with each male in her clan and sometimes with outside males too. The male doesn’t take part in raising of the young and is quite likely to wander off to another clan if there are receptive females there.
What makes them so fascinating and enjoyable to watch and take chimpanzee pictures of has no doubt something to do with their “cuddliness” or strong sense of physical touch. Chimps spend a lot of time grooming each other and especially the young need this reassurance for their wellbeing.
We almost recognise ourselves when they stand on their hind legs to scan the area, or even run on their back legs if they are carrying something or charging in aggression. Usually however, they get around on all-fours, using the knuckles on their hands rather than the palm.
They also use tools such as sticks to “fish” termites out of their mound, throw sticks and stones to repel predators and teach each other their obtained skills, for instance cracking nuts with stones.
Under Threat
It’s sad then that humans are the ones responsible for their decline in numbers through ghastly practices of poaching for meat or the pet trade (approximately 4000 chimps a year are killed and captured in Africa).
At the current rate of decline in numbers, two sub-species of chimpanzee could become extinct in the next 50 years and the only chimpanzee picture you will get of them then is in a zoo.
Version of Record - Jan 13, 2010