Young Chimps smarter then young humans? (elders, evolution, science, Zen)

[Druidus]

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1327942004

Young apes 'brighter than human children'

GORDON CAIRNS


Key points

• Young apes smarter than human kids, scientists claim
• Nursery children come off worse in comparison tests
• Many Scottish teachers would probably agree with findings

Key quote
"The chimpanzees are demonstrating an adaptive ability to pick up aspects of ape-level material culture like simple tool use, but children need to acquire culture on a vastly greater scale." - Dr Victoria Horner

Story in full YOUNG apes are smarter than their human cousins, scientists have claimed. A team from the University of St Andrews discovered that chimpanzees acted more intelligently and were better at problem-solving than pre-school children.

Rather than mimicking adults, the scientists found that young chimps are better at working things out for themselves than children, who will simply copy the actions of their elders.

Dr Victoria Horner and Professor Andrew Whiten studied groups of orphaned chimpanzees in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Uganda, to see how they would adapt to being released to the wild.

The team then conducted the same experiments with pre-school children from local nurseries in St Andrews, for comparison.

The St Andrews primatologists looked at what the chimps did when Dr Horner showed them how to get food out of a box using a stick. She then repeated the experiment with a see-through box.

The chimps copied the doctor when they could not see what was inside the box, but when they saw there was a false ceiling inside the clear box blocking the stick getting to the food, they did not bother stabbing the stick into the box.

When the scientists did the same experiment with Scottish toddlers, they were surprised to learn that the chimps acted in a more intelligent way than the children. In contrast to the chimpanzees, they typically copied all the actions, including the irrelevant ones performed on the transparent box.

Dr Horner said: "They were not just doing this to please me because they would do this even if I left the room and they thought they were not being watched."

Professor Whiten said he suspected that this simply highlights what a cultural species humans are. He said: "The chimpanzees are demonstrating an adaptive ability to pick up aspects of ape-level material culture like simple tool use, but children need to acquire culture on a vastly greater scale.

"It looks as if, at the age of three to four years old in particular, they operate a kind of rule of thumb, that if an adult is doing something that has a useful outcome, then it’s a good idea to copy all they do, even if some of it doesn’t, on the face of it, make too much sense.

"Chimpanzees, at least in the kind of task we set them, may be more discriminating."

But he also suggested there could be an explanation that saves the self-respect of humans. He added: "One alternative is that the children are actually more tuned into the psychology of the individual they are watching and assume that someone repeating an action like this really intends it, so it’s worth copying".

Dr Horner said: "This tells us several important things about how the chimpanzee mind is working in this kind of social learning situation, which is probably very important to youngsters observing their mothers using tools in the wild.

"Most importantly, it suggests that apes like these do not merely ape in a mindless way, but rather more rationally, imitating selectively on the basis of a certain level of understanding of which events can and can’t plausibly cause others.

"That’s quite sophisticated."

The Sanctuary occupies a 100-acre island in Lake Victoria and is home to dozens of young chimpanzees, orphaned mainly because their mothers were victims of the current popularity of ‘bushmeat’ in Africa.

The study has been published online in the science journal Animal Cognition.

[cardero]

Well man created the cardboard box to sleep in it
And man converted the newspaper to a blanket
Well you have to admit that he’s come a long way
Since swinging about in the trees
We’re the smartest monkeys
The smartest monkeys
The evidence is all around
Our brains are bigger
This we’ve found
The smartest monkeys
Well man discovered the park bench can make a transition
And the rubbish tip makes a valid form of nutrition
With discoveries like these
Civilisation agrees
To give itself a pat on the back
We’re the smartest monkeys
The evolution’s plain to see
We’re the dominant of the species
The smartest monkeys
We brought the caveman from the stoneage
To the subways of the modern world
How they pack so many in
Quick call the guinness book of records
Well you have to admit...
We’re the smartest monkeys...

-Andy Partridge of the band XTC