Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Study shows chimps capable of insightful reasoning ability
Shortly after NOT A CHIMP was published, Nathan Emery produced a finding that the corvid birds he was studying were able to solve the Archimedes principle that buoyancy is related to water displacement. They soon learned that by plopping pebbles into a container of water containing floating food, the water level, and thus the food, would rise to a level at which they could retrieve it in their beaks. Now researchers at the Max Planck in Leipzig have found chimps are capable of the same level of insight in that they learned that by using water from a nearby pitcher to add to a container in which food was floating out of reach, they could bring the water level up to the point at which they could get at the food. 1-1 chimps v. corvids!
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